Painted houses where Poland began

Poznań’s Old Market Square was rebuilt after 1945, and it wears its colours well: arcaded merchants’ houses in red, green and ochre, Baroque gables, and in the middle a Renaissance town hall with a three-tiered loggia. Every day at noon two mechanical goats emerge above the clock and butt heads twelve times, and the square stops to watch.

A short walk east, across the Warta, lies Ostrów Tumski, the Cathedral Island. Poland’s first rulers had a stronghold here in the tenth century, and Mieszko I and Bolesław the Brave are commemorated in the Golden Chapel of the cathedral. The island is quiet and green, closer in mood to a village than to a city of more than half a million people.

Poznań is also a trade-fair and university town, which keeps it young and well fed. The Jeżyce district has Art Nouveau tenements, a market on Rynek Jeżycki and a dense run of bistros and coffee bars; the former Stary Browar brewery mixes shops with contemporary art. The local speciality is the St Martin’s croissant, filled with white poppy seeds and nuts.