Poland
From the Baltic dunes to the Tatra peaks, the keystone of Central Europe
Poland stretches from the dunes and lagoons of its Baltic coast to the jagged Tatra Mountains in the south, a broad lowland nation that has long been the keystone of Central Europe. With nearly 39.6 million people, it is the largest of the formerly communist EU members and one of the continent's fastest-growing economies. Its cities, from the restored medieval core of Kraków to rebuilt Warsaw, carry a turbulent history, while its forests, lakes, and the European bison of Białowieża testify to a wilder, older landscape.
Most of Poland is part of the North European Plain, flat and fertile, which left it without natural defenses on its eastern and western frontiers. The Vistula and Oder rivers drain northward to the Baltic, and the Masurian Lake District in the northeast scatters thousands of glacial lakes through dense woodland. In the south the land rises through the Sudetes to the Carpathians and the high Tatras, where Rysy reaches 2,499 meters. Coal, copper, agriculture, and a booming manufacturing and tech sector drive the modern economy.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was once among Europe's largest states before partition erased Poland from the map for over a century. Reborn in 1918, the country became the first battleground of the Second World War, suffering catastrophic losses including the Holocaust on its occupied soil. The Solidarity movement, born in the Gdańsk shipyards, helped topple communism across the bloc. A devoutly Catholic nation that gave the world Copernicus, Chopin, and Pope John Paul II, Poland joined the EU in 2004 and has thrived since.