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750-plus-year-old traditional fair kicks off in Poland

Xinhua, July 27, 2015 Adjust font size:

The 755th edition of St. Dominic's Fair, one of the biggest trade and cultural open-air events in Europe, has kicked off in the Polish seaside city of Gdansk.

The event, dating back to the year 1260, began on Saturday, July 25, and is expected to attract seven million tourists in three weeks.

The Fair, apart from being an opportunity to buy traditional food, amber, clothes, hand-made products and souvenirs, is also accompanied by entertainment events -- theater shows for the children, city games, artistic installation and 55-meter-high devil's wheel, offering a stunning view on the Old Gdansk.

More than 1,000 trading posts unite merchants form Poland, Belarus, France, Spain, India, Israel, Lithuania, Nepal, Germany, Ukraine, Hungary and Britain.

A separate part of the Fair's was dedicated to the Bread Festival, during which many bread factories competed in the unique forms and traditional taste.

The event is of the great importance to the city, occupying the bigger part of Gdansk's old town. More than 400 ships used to sail to the Port of Gdansk and the transactions were held in many languages once, with merchants offering traditional regional goods, as well as foreign products.

St. Dominic's Fair has been organized annually for centuries ever since, with a 33-year break after the outbreak of the Second World War. Since 1972 it came back on a huge scale, seen mostly as a trade event. Enditem