Zielona Gora is conveniently located in the centre of Europe, not far from the Polish-German border and practically on the crosswords of several international road and rail routes connecting Scandinavia with Eastern Europe and Warsaw with Berlin. The city is 130 km from Poznan and 413 km from Warsaw, and has more than 118 000 inhabitants and covers a total urban and suburban area of 6,000 hectares.

Zielona Gora has an oceanic climate rather than a continental one. Being located on several hills means that the average temperatures are slightly lower than in the surrounding river valleys, and it receives the highest rainfall of the Lubuskie voivodship. As a consequence the city’s climate has been classified as a separate climatic zone.

The origins of Zielona Gora are to a large extent connected with the Duchy of Glogow, held by the Silesian Piast dynasty. Already by the 13th century a Slavonic settlement had grown up in a small valley here in far north-western Silesia, and its earliest mention dates from 1222.

From the very beginning, Zielona Gora grew based on the manufacture of woollen cloth and the growing of grapes. Vineyards are first referred to in 1314, while the first mention of cloth fulling can be fou... ( más >>)