title: Billy Milligan

text: Morrison struggled with fatherhood, and according to Daniel Keyes, "Meeting the medical expenses overwhelmed Johnny. He borrowed more, gambled more, drank more... He was hospitalized for acute alcoholism and depression in ... 1958." In what appeared to be a suicide attempt, according to Keyes, "Dorothy found him slumped over the table, half a bottle of Scotch and an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the floor." A few months after this attempt, on January 17, 1959, Johnny died by suicide from carbon monoxide poisoning.


title: Billy Milligan

text: Dorothy took her children and moved away from Miami, eventually returning to Lancaster, Ohio. There, she remarried her ex-husband. This marriage lasted about a year. In 1962, she met Chalmer Milligan (1927–1988). Chalmer's first wife Bernice divorced him on the "grounds of gross neglect". He had a daughter, Challa, the same age as Billy, and another daughter who was a nurse. Dorothy and Chalmer married in Circleville, Ohio, on October 27, 1963.


title: Billy Milligan

text: At his later trial, Chalmer was blamed for abusing Billy. Keyes claimed that Billy had multiple personalities from a much earlier age, however, with his first three (no-name boy, Christene, and Shawn) appearing by the time he was five years old.


title: Billy Milligan

text: In 1975, Milligan was imprisoned at Lebanon Correctional Institution in Ohio for rape and armed robbery. He was released on parole in early 1977. In October 1977, Milligan was arrested for raping three women on the Ohio State University campus. He was identified by one of his victims from existing police mug shots of sex offenders, and from fingerprints lifted from another victim's car.


title: Billy Milligan

text: Since he used a gun during the crime and guns were found in a search of his residence, he had violated his parole as well. He was indicted on "three counts of[kidnapping], three counts of aggravated robbery and four counts of rape." He was placed in the Ohio State Penitentiary pending trial.


title: Billy Milligan

text: In the course of preparing his defense, he underwent a psychological examination by Dr. Willis C. Driscoll, who diagnosed Milligan with acute schizophrenia. He was then examined by psychologist Dorothy Turner of Southwest Community Mental Health Center in Columbus, Ohio. During this examination, Turner concluded that Milligan had dissociative identity disorder. Milligan's public defenders, Gary Schweickart and Judy Stevenson, pleaded an insanity defense, and he was committed "until such time as he regains sanity".


title: Billy Milligan

text: Milligan was sent to a series of state-run psychiatric hospitals, such as the Athens State Hospital, where, by his report, he received very little help. While he was in these hospitals, Milligan reported having ten different personalities. These ten were the only ones known to psychologists. Later on an additional 14 personalities, labeled "The Undesirables", were discovered. Among the first ten were Arthur, a prim and proper Englishman who was an expert in science, medicine and hematology; Allen, a manipulator; Tommy, an escape artist and technophile; Ragen Vadascovinich, a Yugoslav communist who Milligan claimed had committed the robberies in a kind of Robin Hood spirit; and Adalana, a 19-year-old lesbian (shy, lonely and introverted) who cooked for all the personalities and craved affection, and who had allegedly committed the rapes.


title: Billy Milligan

text: Milligan received treatment from psychiatrist David Caul MD, who diagnosed the additional 14 personalities.


title: Billy Milligan

text: In 1986, Milligan had escaped the mental facility where he had been committed. During this time, he went by an alias (Christopher Carr) and might have been guilty of abducting his roommate and killing him, one of two murders about which Milligan is suspected.


title: Billy Milligan

text: Milligan was released in 1988 after a decade in psychiatric hospitals. On August 1, 1991, he was discharged from the Ohio mental health system and the Ohio courts. In 1996, he lived in California where he owned Stormy Life Productions and was going to make a short film (which apparently was never made). His location, thereafter, remained for a long time unknown, his former acquaintances having lost contact with him.


title: Billy Milligan

text: Daniel Keyes authored a biographical non-fiction novel called "The Minds of Billy Milligan" (1981). His follow-up book, "The Milligan Wars", was published in Japan in 1994, in Taiwan in 2000, in France in 2009, in Ukraine in 2018, but not in the United States, first owing to Milligan's ongoing lawsuit against the State of Ohio for the allegedly inadequate treatment he received in Ohio facilities, then to the desire to tie its release to an in-development film.


title: Billy Milligan

text: Several attempts had been made by Hollywood to adapt Keyes' book. In the early 1990s, James Cameron co-wrote a screenplay with Todd Graff for a film version he was to direct then-titled "A Crowded Room". This adaptation never came into fruition because Cameron was sued by adaptation rightsholder Sandy Arcara, demanding "her salary should be raised from $250,000 to $1.5 million"; seeing the project stalled, Milligan also sued Cameron in 1993.


title: Billy Milligan

text: After Cameron left the project, Warner Bros. continued to develop the now slightly retitled "The Crowded Room", with directors Joel Schumacher and David Fincher attached at various points. Actors courted for the role of Milligan included Matthew McConaughey, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and John Cusack. In February 2015, it was confirmed that Leonardo DiCaprio would star as Milligan, and Jason Smilovic was set to pen the script.


title: Billy Milligan

text: In 2021, it was announced that "The Crowded Room" would instead be adapted as a ten-episode television series, starring Tom Holland, rather than the unrealized DiCaprio project.


title: Billy Milligan

text: In 2021, Netflix released a four-part documentary entitled "." The series was directed by Olivier Megaton. The docuseries mentions that Milligan had confessed being a murderer to his niece prior to his passing away, and links him to two unsolved murders. It features video interviews with various people connected to the case and tape recordings of his psychiatric sessions.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: William Frederick Gibbons (born December 16, 1949) is an American musician who is the guitarist and lead singer of the rock band ZZ Top. He began his career in the band the Moving Sidewalks, which recorded a full-length album entitled, "Flash" in 1968 and opened four dates for the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Gibbons formed ZZ Top in late 1969 and released "ZZ Top's First Album" in early 1971. He has also maintained a solo career in recent years, starting with his first album "Perfectamundo" (2015).


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons possesses a gravelly bass-baritone singing voice and is known for his bluesy, groove based guitar style. Gibbons is also recognized for the chest-length beard he has worn since 1979, a look he shared with ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill until Hill's death in 2021.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons has made appearances with other artists and acted on television shows, most notably in "Bones". In 2001, "Rolling Stone" named him the 32nd greatest guitarist of all time.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons was born to Frederick Royal ("Freddie") and Lorraine (née Duffy) Gibbons in the Tanglewood neighborhood of Houston, Texas. His father was an entertainer, orchestra conductor, and concert pianist who worked alongside his second cousin, art director Cedric Gibbons, for Samuel Goldwyn at MGM Studios. When Gibbons was five years old, his mother took him and his sister to see Elvis Presley. At age seven, Gibbons's father took him to a BB King recording session. A percussionist at first, Gibbons was sent by his father to New York City to study with Tito Puente. In 1962, Gibbons received his first electric guitar following his 13th birthday, a sunburst Gibson Melody Maker, accompanied by a Fender Champ amplifier, and was influenced by guitarists such as Jimmy Reed.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: While attending Warner Brothers' art school in Hollywood, California, Gibbons engaged with his first bands including the Saints, Billy G & the Blueflames, and the Coachmen. By 18, Gibbons formed an artfully designed band, conceptually inspired by friend and fellow musician, Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, naming the group the Moving Sidewalks, penning the hit single "99th Floor", and engaging in a friendship with Jimi Hendrix.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons founded the Texas psychedelic group the Moving Sidewalks, which recorded several singles and one full-length album, "Flash". Gibbons and the Moving Sidewalks came to prominence opening for the Jimi Hendrix Experience during Hendrix's first American tour as a headliner. Also notable was the Gibbons-penned song, "99th Floor", its title a nod to the influence on Gibbons of fellow Texans and pioneering psychedelic band the 13th Floor Elevators. He has also commented during live performances while playing the string-bending intro to "Foxy Lady" that Hendrix taught him how to play when Gibbons was "about 17" in Dallas.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons formed ZZ Top in late 1969, and quickly settled on bassist/vocalist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank "Rube" Beard, both members of the band American Blues. After honing their trademark blues-rock style, they released "ZZ Top's First Album" on London Records in 1971. Although all three members were born in 1949, Gibbons was the youngest member of the band.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: On July 31, 2015 it was announced that Gibbons' solo project will be named Billy Gibbons and the BFG's featuring musicians Mike Flanigin, GG Maartine ("née" Martine GuiGui), Joe Hardy and Greg Morrow. Their debut album, "Perfectamundo", was released on November 6, 2015.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons' second solo album, "The Big Bad Blues", was released on September 21, 2018 via Concord Records. At the 40th Blues Music Awards in May 2019, the album was named as 'Blues Rock Album of the Year'.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: In a 2019 interview with "Guitar World", Gibbons said that he was already starting to work on his next solo release: "I think we're going to call it "Hardware", and that's in tribute to Joe Hardy, our stalwart engineer for four decades. He recently passed on, but in his wake he left the instruction manual -- 'Here's how to do it.' We're still trying to get to the back chapters. It goes deep." The album was released in 2021.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons played the first slide guitar lead on the song "Dead End Streets" on Al Jourgensen of Ministry's side project Revolting Cocks album "Cocked and Loaded".


title: Billy Gibbons

text: He wrote, played guitar on and sang "Willin' for Satisfaction" from Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell's 2005 solo album "Two Sides of If".


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons collaborated with the Queens of the Stone Age on the song "Burn the Witch" from the album "Lullabies to Paralyze". ZZ Top's "Precious and Grace" was recorded with lead vocals provided by Mark Lanegan as a bonus track for the album. Gibbons has claimed this was one of his favorite collaborations and "Precious and Grace" was later added back into ZZ Top's set lists. Gibbons was selected to guest the follow-up album "Era Vulgaris" but was unable due to scheduling conflicts.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: In 2007, Gibbons was featured in the documentary feature film "The 1959 Burst" alongside Les Paul guitar legends like Slash, Rick Nielsen and Eric Johnson


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Together with the Raconteurs Gibbons performed at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards. Gibbons was part of an ensemble chosen to play with the band, which included Lou Reed and Jim Jarmusch. The performance was heavily edited and cut short by MTV for broadcast.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons was one of several artists to join B.B. King on the song "Tired of Your Jive", from the "B.B. King & Friends" album.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons appeared on Nickelback's album "All the Right Reasons" on the songs "Follow You Home", "Fight for All the Wrong Reasons" and "Rockstar".


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons performed with Hank Williams III on the song "Trashville" from his album "Lovesick, Broke and Driftin'".


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons collaborated with Les Paul with his Les Paul & Friends "American Made, World Played" track "Bad Case of Loving You". Gibbons also performed guitar with John Mayall & Friends' track "Put It Right Back" from the album "Along for the Ride". He was the first artist to appear on stage at Cleveland's State theater in November 2008 at the American Music Master Tribute to Les Paul, honoring the guitar and recording innovator, who died a few months later.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons was the guitarist during singer Luis Fonsi's presentation at the seventh Latin Grammy awards held in Madison Square Garden, New York, on November 2, 2006.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons sang background vocals on Sammy Hagar's 2008 CD "Cosmic Universal Fashion" during the song "Switch on the Light".


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons collaborated with Ronnie Dunn, of Brooks & Dunn fame, for Dunn's first solo work, playing guitar and singing along on the song, "Honky Tonk Stomp".


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons played guitar on "Broke Down on the Brazos", the opening track of Gov't Mule's 2009 album "By a Thread".


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons played guitar on "Run Rudolph Run", the third track of "We Wish you a Metal Xmas and a Headbanging New Year" compilation.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons joined Jeff Beck onstage at the 2009 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert with a version of Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady".


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons made a special guest appearance behind Roky Erickson on "Austin City Limits" taped on November 12, 2007, and originally aired January 12, 2008. ("ACL" Season 33, Episode 12).


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons plays lead guitar on two songs from the 2008 Everlast album "Love, War and the Ghost of Whitey Ford": "Stone in My Hand" and "Anyone".


title: Billy Gibbons

text: On January 22, 2010, Gibbons joined Ben Harper, Jeff Beck, Conan O'Brien and others on the final episode of "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" playing a Will Ferrell-led rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird".


title: Billy Gibbons

text: On February 19, 2011, Gibbons appeared as a guest judge at the 5th Annual Misprint Beard and Moustache Contest at the Mohawk Club in Austin, Texas.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: On December 15, 2012, Gibbons made a guest appearance at Social Distortion's concert at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip. Frontman Mike Ness brought him out for two songs, "Drug Train" and "Black Magic". On November 19, 2014, Gibbons performed "Baby Please Don't Go" at the Vaclav Havel bust dedication ceremony in the US capitol.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: In November 2021, Gibbons appeared alongside Dion DiMucci on "My Stomping Ground" which is featured in DiMucci's "Stomping Ground" album.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons had a recurring role on the Fox network TV series "Bones", appearing in seven episodes over nine years. He plays a fictionalized version of himself, as the father of Michaela Conlin's character, Angela Pearly Gates Montenegro. He is never referred to by name on the show, though; every mention is limited to "Angela's father". Conlin's character's middle name is the same as Gibbons' Les Paul guitar. Gibbons's character is extremely protective of his daughter, and he often "threatens" or "haunts" Angela's husband and colleague Dr. Jack Hodgins, telling him that if he hurts Angela, he will pay. When Angela and Hodgins first broke up, he drugged and kidnapped Hodgins, during which time he also gave him a tattoo of Angela's face on his left deltoid area. After Angela discovers the tattoo, she informs Hodgins she wants it removed (he never removed it) and angrily exclaimed when she discovered it was her dad's doing, "I am so going to kick his Texan bad ass."


title: Billy Gibbons

text: He has appeared in several other episodes of "Bones", including one where he asks Hodgins to help him recover his car from some "biker hoods". In his next appearance, he argued with Hodgins over baby names. He wanted the child to be named "Staccato Mamba", which came to him in a song, while Angela and Hodgins wanted to name him "Michael Vincent". (Parents and grandfather compromised on "Michael Staccato".) At the end of the episode, Hodgins discovers he has yet another tattoo on his right biceps, this time of his father-in-law with the word "Daddy" across Gibbons' beard (at which point Gibbons told Hodgins that celebratory tequila and he do not seem to mix). In a later episode, he asks to babysit his grandson Michael, pointing out that Angela had spent many nights when she was a baby sleeping soundly backstage while he played to sold-out stadiums. After initial reluctance of Angela and Hodgins, they agree due to the need to get some sleep, as Michael will not stop crying and go to sleep. Gibbons solves the problem by discovering the music Michael likes, including blues and boogie rock, such as ZZ Top's "Hi Fi Mama".


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons, along with his ZZ Top bandmates Dusty Hill and Frank Beard, voiced a fictionalized version of himself in Fox's animated show "King of the Hill", which is set in the fictional town of Arlen, Texas. In the show, Dusty Hill is said to be a cousin of the show's main character, Hank Hill.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Although first published in 2005, "Billy F Gibbons: Rock + Roll Gearhead" received an expanded re-release from Motorbooks in 2020 for the 50th anniversary of ZZ Top. Gibbons joined author Tom Vickers and photographer David Perry which offers a look at his collection of cars and guitars, including the famous Eliminator Ford 1933 coupe that appeared on the cover of ZZ Top's 1983 album of the same name. The book is ultimately divided into three sections: The Life, The Cars, and The Guitars.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: In 2011, Gibbons joined with Texas-based Mojo Products, LLC, to launch a line of hot sauces, barbecue sauces, and other products with his own personal branding, "BFG Brand". The sauces were sold as BFG No. 44 via his personal website.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: In late 2012, Gibbons was featured in a series of television commercials for Fiesta Mart, a Texas supermarket chain. Some of the BFG Brand sauces were seen in these commercials.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: In 2018, Billy Gibbons teamed up with John Fogerty; the two guitar players are planning a summer tour under "The Holy Grail" title. John Fogerty wrote a song with the title "The Holy Grail" which Gibbons has appeared on, adding his vocals and some guitar, Billy had this to say to 'Billboard Magazine': "It's not an overstatement to say that writing a song with John Fogerty is a genuine bonus. It's fair to say that John and I are both pumped about our collaboration and we think this new one called 'The Holy Grail' holds true with some great storytelling and some solid guitarist movin' the number right along. It begs a shout of, 'Turn it up!'" The new single "The Holy Grail" was released on June 8, 2018.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons' primarily plays Gibson guitars. His first guitar was a sunburst 1962 Gibson Melody Maker. In 1968, Gibbons acquired a sunburst 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar from a farmer in Houston, Texas, for $250. The guitar was named Pearly Gates, a name taken from the dangerous-to-drive rolling-wreck auto that he sold to buy the guitar. The guitar has become the foundation/benchmark of every ZZ Top album since the group formed in 1969.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons also plays Fender guitars. During his stint in the Moving Sidewalks, Gibbons used a white 1963 Fender Jazzmaster and Fender Esquire. He has also used an extremely rare "Gretsch Jupiter Thunderbird" given to him by Bo Diddley. The use of this guitar (beginning with the 2003 ZZ Top album "Mescalero") inspired a signature production model, the Gretsch Billy-Bo Jupiter Thunderbird. For "Mescalero", Gibbons also relied heavily on Ulrich Teuffel's futuristic Birdfish guitar, saying it was second only to Pearly Gates. According to Gibbons, "It really shines on Mescalero because of that dirty, raunchy tone. I defy any other instrument, besides these odd-ball things, to get that crazy." Gibbons recorded "Eliminator" using a Dean ML guitar.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: For the music video for the 1983 single "Legs", Gibbons and Hill used matching spinning sheepskin fur guitars made by Dean Zelinsky of Dean Guitars. The guitars are attached to the belt buckles with a rotary electrical contact and strap mount, allowing them to spin. Gibbons credited the spinning idea to Moving Sidewalks bassist Don Summers.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons worked with Thomas Nilsen of Cream T Pickups to create the BFG Banger humbucker pickup. At the 2010 Winter NAMM show, Dunlop Manufacturing and Gibbons unveiled a new line of guitar accessories, Rev. Willy's. These include Gibbons inspired picks, strings, and slides.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons notably uses strings in an extra light gauge of .07-.09-.11-.20-.30-.38 on his guitars and has a signature set manufactured and sold by Dunlop known as "Rev. Willy's Mexican Lottery Brand". The company also manufactures other gauges of these strings.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Originally a user of heavy gauge strings in ZZ Top's earliest days, Gibbons switched to light strings after playing a show with B.B. King. King asked to play Gibbons' guitar, which he gladly obliged. After playing it, King noticed the heavy strings, handed the guitar back to Gibbons and asked, "Why you working so hard?". Gibbons had assumed that the classic blues sound came from playing heavy gauge strings, but King told him otherwise and advised him to put light gauge strings on his guitar instead.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons has used a variety of Marshall products, including the JCM 900 Dual Reverb, Bluesbreaker, JTM45, Major, and Lead 12. Recently, his live touring rack consists of the JMP-1 Preamp, combined with power amps such as the Valvestate 120 or the 9200 model. Gibbons has a large collection of vintage Fender amplifiers (his first amp was a Fender Champ), and collects Fender Dual Professionals. Other Fenders he has used include a Fender Bassman and Fender Tweed Deluxe. Gibbons now uses Magnatone amplifiers.


title: Billy Gibbons

text: On December 14, 2005, Gibbons married longtime girlfriend Gilligan Stillwater (born Ellen J. Oetjen).


title: Billy Gibbons

text: Gibbons is an avid car collector and custom car enthusiast with an extensive collection that includes a 1948 Cadillac Series 62 (known as CadZZilla), a 1962 Chevrolet Impala (known as "Slampala"), a 1950 Ford Business Coupe, and a 1958 Ford Thunderbird. One of his earliest custom cars, a 1933 Ford Coupe (known as "Eliminator"), was featured in three of ZZ Top's music videos and is also on the cover of their 1983 album, also titled "Eliminator". Gibbons also published a book in 2011 about his love of cars and guitars titled "Billy F Gibbons: Rock + Roll Gearhead". The November 2014 issue of "Guitar World" magazine featured an interview with Gibbons and fellow guitarist Jeff Beck about their mutual appreciation of "cars, guitars, and everything in between".


title: Billy Gibbons

text: For several years, Gibbons has appeared wearing a braided-cloth cap rather than his familiar Stetson hat. During a visit to Vienna, he met the chief of the Bamileke people from Cameroon, with whom he traded the hat for the cap.


title: Star of David

text: The Star of David () is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles.


title: Star of David

text: A derivation of the "seal of Solomon", which was used for decorative and mystical purposes by Muslims and Kabbalistic Jews, its adoption as a distinctive symbol for the Jewish people and their religion dates back to 17th-century Prague. In the 19th century, the symbol began to be widely used among the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, ultimately coming to be used to represent Jewish identity or religious beliefs. It became representative of Zionism after it was chosen as the central symbol for a Jewish national flag at the First Zionist Congress in 1897.


title: Star of David

text: By the end of World War I, it had become an internationally accepted symbol for the Jewish people, being used on the gravestones of fallen Jewish soldiers.


title: Star of David

text: Unlike the menorah, the Lion of Judah, the shofar and the lulav, the hexagram was not originally a uniquely Jewish symbol. The hexagram, being an inherently simple geometric construction, has been used in various motifs throughout human history, which were not exclusively religious. It appeared as a decorative motif in both 4th-century synagogues and Christian churches in the Galilee region.


title: Star of David

text: Gershom Scholem writes that the term "seal of Solomon" was adopted by Jews from Islamic magic literature, while he could not assert with certainty whether the term "shield of David" originated in Islamic or Jewish mysticism. Leonora Leet argues though that not just the terminology, but the esoteric philosophy behind it had pre-Islamic Jewish roots and provides among other arguments the Talmud's mention of the hexagram as being engraved on Solomon's seal ring. She also shows that Jewish alchemists were the teachers of their Muslim and Christian counterparts, and that a way-opener such as Maria Hebraea of Alexandria (2nd or 3rd century CE; others date her earlier) already used concepts which were later adopted by Muslim and Christian alchemists and could be graphically associated with the symbolism of the upper and lower triangles constituting the hexagram, which came into explicit use after her time. The hexagram however only becomes widespread in Jewish magical texts and amulets ("segulot") in the early Middle Ages, which is why most modern authors have seen Islamic mysticism as the source of the medieval Spanish Kabbalists' use of the hexagram.


title: Star of David

text: Only around one millennium later, however, the star would begin to be used as a symbol to identify Jewish communities, a tradition that seems to have started in Prague before the 17th century, and from there spread to much of Eastern Europe.


title: Star of David

text: In the 19th century, it came to be adopted by European Jews as a symbol to represent Jewish religion or identity in the same manner the Christian cross identified that religion's believers. The symbol became representative of the worldwide Zionist community after it was chosen as the central symbol on a flag at the First Zionist Congress in 1897, due to its usage in some Jewish communities and its lack of specifically religious connotations. It was not considered an exclusively Jewish symbol until after it began to be used on the gravestones of fallen Jewish soldiers in World War I.


title: Star of David

text: The hexagram does appear occasionally in Jewish contexts since antiquity, apparently as a decorative motif. For example, in Israel, there is a stone bearing a hexagram from the arch of the 3rd–4th century Khirbet Shura synagogue in the Galilee. Originally, the hexagram may have been employed as an architectural ornament on synagogues, as it is, for example, on the cathedrals of Brandenburg and Stendal, and on the Marktkirche at Hanover. A hexagram in this form is found on the ancient synagogue at Capernaum.


title: Star of David

text: The use of the hexagram in a Jewish context as a possibly meaningful symbol may occur as early as the 11th century, in the decoration of the carpet page of the famous Tanakh manuscript, the Leningrad Codex dated 1008. Similarly, the symbol illuminates a medieval Tanakh manuscript dated 1307 belonging to Rabbi Yosef bar Yehuda ben Marvas from Toledo, Spain.


title: Star of David

text: A hexagram has been noted on a Jewish tombstone in Taranto, Apulia in Southern Italy, which may date as early as the third century CE. The Jews of Apulia were noted for their scholarship in Kabbalah, which has been connected to the use of the Star of David.


title: Star of David

text: Medieval Kabbalistic grimoires show hexagrams among the tables of segulot, but without identifying them as "Shield of David".


title: Star of David

text: In the Renaissance, in the 16th-century Land of Israel, the book Ets Khayim conveys the Kabbalah of Ha-Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) who arranges the traditional items on the seder plate for Passover into two triangles, where they explicitly correspond to Jewish mystical concepts. The six sfirot of the masculine Zer Anpin correspond to the six items on the seder plate, while the seventh sfira being the feminine Malkhut corresponds to the plate itself.


title: Star of David

text: However, these seder-plate triangles are parallel, one above the other, and do not actually form a hexagram.


title: Star of David

text: Isaac Luria provided the hexagram with a further mystical meaning. In his book "Etz Chayim" he teaches that the elements of the plate for the Seder evening have to be placed in the order of the hexagram: above the three sefirot "Crown", "Wisdom", and "Insight", below the other seven.


title: Star of David

text: Similarly, M. Costa wrote that M. Gudemann and other researchers in the 1920s claimed that Isaac Luria was influential in turning the Star of David into a national Jewish emblem by teaching that the elements of the plate for the Seder evening have to be placed in the order of the hexagram. Gershom Scholem (1990) disagrees with this view, arguing that Isaac Luria talked about parallel triangles one beneath the other and not about the hexagram.


title: Star of David

text: The Star of David at least since the 20th century remains associated with the number seven and thus with the Menorah, and popular accounts associate it with the six directions of space plus the center (under the influence of the description of space found in the Sefer Yetsira: Up, Down, East, West, South, North, and Center), or the Six Sefirot of the Male (Zeir Anpin) united with the Seventh Sefirot of the Female (Nukva). Some say that one triangle represents the ruling tribe of Judah and the other the former ruling tribe of Benjamin. It is also seen as a dalet and yud, the two letters assigned to Judah. There are 12 Vav, or "men," representing the 12 tribes or patriarchs of Israel.


title: Star of David

text: In 1354, King of Bohemia Charles IV approved for the Jews of Prague a red flag with a hexagram. In 1460, the Jews of Ofen (Buda, now part of Budapest, Hungary) received King Matthias Corvinus with a red flag on which were two Shields of David and two stars. In the first Hebrew prayer book, printed in Prague in 1512, a large hexagram appears on the cover. In the colophon is written: "Each man beneath his flag according to the house of their fathers...and he will merit to bestow a bountiful gift on anyone who grasps the Shield of David." In 1592, Mordechai Maizel was allowed to affix "a flag of King David, similar to that located on the Main Synagogue" on his synagogue in Prague. Following the Battle of Prague (1648), the Jews of Prague were again granted a flag, in recognition in their contribution to the city's defense. That flag showed a yellow hexagram on a red background, with a "Swedish star" placed in the center of the hexagram.


title: Star of David

text: The symbol became representative of the worldwide Zionist community, and later the broader Jewish community, after it was chosen to represent the First Zionist Congress in 1897.


title: Star of David

text: We have no flag, and we need one. If we desire to lead many men, we must raise a symbol above their heads. I would suggest a white flag, with seven golden stars. The white field symbolizes our pure new life; the stars are the seven golden hours of our working-day. For we shall march into the Promised Land carrying the badge of honor.


title: Star of David

text: David Wolffsohn (1856–1914), a businessman prominent in the early Zionist movement, was aware that the nascent Zionist movement had no official flag, and that the design proposed by Theodor Herzl was gaining no significant support, wrote:


title: Star of David

text: At the behest of our leader Herzl, I came to Basle to make preparations for the Zionist Congress. Among many other problems that occupied me then was one that contained something of the essence of the Jewish problem. What flag would we hang in the Congress Hall? Then an idea struck me. We have a flag—and it is blue and white. The talith (prayer shawl) with which we wrap ourselves when we pray: that is our symbol. Let us take this Talith from its bag and unroll it before the eyes of Israel and the eyes of all nations. So I ordered a blue and white flag with the Shield of David painted upon it. That is how the national flag, that flew over Congress Hall, came into being.


title: Star of David

text: In the early 20th century, the symbol began to be used to express Jewish affiliations in sports. Hakoah Vienna was a Jewish sports club founded in Vienna, Austria, in 1909 whose teams competed with the Star of David on the chest of their uniforms, and won the 1925 Austrian League soccer championship. Similarly, The Philadelphia Sphas basketball team in Philadelphia (whose name was an acronym of its founding South Philadelphia Hebrew Association) wore a large Star of David on their jerseys to proudly proclaim their Jewish identity, as they competed in the first half of the 20th century.


title: Star of David

text: In boxing, Benny "the Ghetto Wizard" Leonard (who said he felt as though he was fighting for all Jews) fought with a Star of David embroidered on his trunks in the 1910s. World heavyweight boxing champion Max Baer fought with a Star of David on his trunks as well, notably, for the first time as he knocked out Nazi Germany hero Max Schmeling in 1933; Hitler never permitted Schmeling to fight a Jew again.


title: Star of David

text: A Star of David, often yellow, was used by the Nazis during the Holocaust to identify Jews. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, there initially were different local decrees forcing Jews to wear distinct signs (e.g. in the General Government, a white armband with a blue Star of David; in the , a yellow badge, in the form of a Star of David, on the left breast and on the back). If a Jew was found in public without the star, he could be severely punished. The requirement to wear the Star of David with the word (German for Jew) was then extended to all Jews over the age of six in the Reich and in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (by a decree issued on September 1, 1941, and signed by Reinhard Heydrich) and was gradually introduced in other Nazi-occupied areas. Others, however, wore the Star of David as a symbol of defiance against Nazi antisemitism, as in the case of United States Army private Hal Baumgarten, who wore a Star of David emblazoned on his back during the 1944 invasion of Normandy.


title: Star of David

text: The flag of Israel, depicting a blue Star of David on a white background, between two horizontal blue stripes was adopted on October 28, 1948, five months after the country's establishment. The origins of the flag's design date from the First Zionist Congress in 1897; the flag has subsequently been known as the "flag of Zion".


title: Star of David

text: Many Modern Orthodox synagogues, and many synagogues of other Jewish movements, have the Israeli flag with the Star of David prominently displayed at the front of the synagogues near the Ark containing the Torah scrolls.


title: Star of David

text: Magen David Adom (MDA) ("Red Star of David" or, translated literally, "Red Shield of David") is Israel's only official emergency medical, disaster, ambulance service.


title: Star of David

text: It has been an official member of the International Committee of the Red Cross since June 2006. According to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Magen David Adom was boycotted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which refused to grant the organization membership because "it was [...] argued that having an emblem used by only one country was contrary to the principles of universality." Other commentators said the ICRC did not recognize the medical and humanitarian use of this Jewish symbol, a Red Shield, alongside the Christian cross and the Muslim crescent.


title: Star of David

text: Since 1948, the Star of David has carried the dual significance of representing both the state of Israel, and Jewish identity in general. In the United States especially, it continues to be used in the latter sense by a number of athletes.


title: Star of David

text: In baseball, Jewish major leaguer Gabe Kapler had a Star of David tattooed on his left calf in 2000, with the words "strong-willed" and "strong-minded", major leaguer Mike "SuperJew" Epstein drew a Star of David on his baseball glove, and major leaguer Ron Blomberg had a Star of David emblazoned in the knob of his bat which is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame.


title: Star of David

text: NBA basketball star Amar'e Stoudemire, who says he is spiritually and culturally Jewish, had a Star of David tattoo put on his left hand in 2010. NFL football defensive end Igor Olshansky has Star of David tattoos on each side of his neck, near his shoulders. Israeli golfer Laetitia Beck displays a blue-and-white magen david symbol on her golf apparel.


title: Star of David

text: In boxing, Jewish light heavyweight world champion Mike "The Jewish Bomber" Rossman fought with a Star of David embroidered on his boxing trunks, and also has a blue Star of David tattoo on the outside of his right calf.


title: Star of David

text: Other boxers fought with Stars of David embroidered on their trunks include world lightweight champion, world light heavyweight boxing champion Battling Levinsky, Barney Ross (world champion as a lightweight, as a junior welterweight, and as a welterweight), world flyweight boxing champion Victor "Young" Peres, world bantamweight champion Alphonse Halimi, and more recently World Boxing Association super welterweight champion Yuri Foreman, light welterweight champion Cletus Seldin, and light middleweight Boyd Melson. Welterweight Zachary "Kid Yamaka" Wohlman has a tattoo of a Star of David across his stomach, and welterweight Dmitriy Salita even boxes under the nickname "Star of David".


title: Star of David

text: The "Jewish Encyclopedia" cites a 12th-century Karaite document as the earliest Jewish literary source to mention a symbol called "Magen Dawid" (without specifying its shape).


title: Star of David

text: The name 'Shield of David' was used by at least the 11th century as a title of the God of Israel, independent of the use of the symbol. The phrase occurs independently as a divine title in the Siddur, the traditional Jewish prayer book, where it poetically refers to the divine protection of ancient King David and the anticipated restoration of his dynastic house, perhaps based on Psalm 18, which is attributed to David, and in which God is compared to a shield (v. 31 and v. 36). The term occurs at the end of the "Samkhaynu/Gladden us" blessing, which is recited after the reading of the Haftara portion on Saturday and holidays.


title: Star of David

text: The earliest known text related to Judaism which mentions a sign called the "Shield of David" is "Eshkol Ha-Kofer" by the Karaite Judah Hadassi, in the mid-12th century CE:


title: Star of David

text: Seven names of angels precede the mezuzah: Michael, Gabriel, etc. ...Tetragrammaton protect you! And likewise the sign, called the "Shield of David", is placed beside the name of each angel.


title: Star of David

text: This book is of Karaite, and not of Rabbinic Jewish origin, and it does not describe the shape of the sign in any way.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: The XY sex-determination system is a sex-determination system used to classify many mammals, including humans, some insects ("Drosophila"), some snakes, some fish (guppies), and some plants ("Ginkgo" tree). In this system, the sex of an individual is determined by a pair of sex chromosomes. Females have two of the same kind of sex chromosome (XX), and are called the homogametic sex. Males have two different kinds of sex chromosomes (XY), and are called the heterogametic sex.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: In humans, the presence of the Y chromosome is responsible for triggering male development; in the absence of the Y chromosome, the fetus will undergo female development. There are various exceptions, such as individuals with Klinefelter syndrome (who have XXY chromosomes), Swyer syndrome (women with XY chromosomes), and XX male syndrome (men with XX chromosomes), however these exceptions are rare. In most species with XY sex determination, an organism must have at least one X chromosome in order to survive.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: The XY system contrasts in several ways with the ZW sex-determination system found in birds, some insects, many reptiles, and various other animals, in which the heterogametic sex is female. It had been thought for several decades that in all snakes sex was determined by the ZW system, but there had been observations of unexpected effects in the genetics of species in the families Boidae and Pythonidae; for example, parthenogenic reproduction produced only females rather than males, which is the opposite of what is to be expected in the ZW system. In the early years of the 21st century such observations prompted research that demonstrated that all pythons and boas so far investigated definitely have the XY system of sex determination.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: All animals have a set of DNA coding for genes present on chromosomes. In humans, most mammals, and some other species, two of the chromosomes, called the X chromosome and Y chromosome, code for sex. In these species, one or more genes are present on their Y chromosome that determine maleness. In this process, an X chromosome and a Y chromosome act to determine the sex of offspring, often due to genes located on the Y chromosome that code for maleness. Offspring have two sex chromosomes: an offspring with two X chromosomes will develop female characteristics, and an offspring with an X and a Y chromosome will develop male characteristics.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: In most mammals, sex is determined by presence of the Y chromosome. This makes individuals with XXY and XYY karyotypes males, and individuals with X and XXX karyotypes females.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: In the 1930s, Alfred Jost determined that the presence of testosterone was required for Wolffian duct development in the male rabbit.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: SRY is a sex-determining gene on the Y chromosome in the therians (placental mammals and marsupials). Non-human mammals use several genes on the Y chromosome.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Not all male-specific genes are located on the Y chromosome. Platypus, a monotreme, use five pairs of different XY chromosomes with six groups of male-linked genes, AMH being the master switch.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: A single gene ("SRY") present on the Y chromosome acts as a signal to set the developmental pathway towards maleness. Presence of this gene starts off the process of virilization. This and other factors result in the sex differences in humans. The cells in females, with two X chromosomes, undergo X-inactivation, in which one of the two X chromosomes is inactivated. The inactivated X chromosome remains within a cell as a Barr body.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Some species of turtles have convergently evolved XY sex determination systems, specifically those in Chelidae and Staurotypinae.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Other species (including most "Drosophila" species) use the presence of two X chromosomes to determine femaleness: one X chromosome gives putative maleness, but the presence of Y chromosome genes is required for normal male development. In the fruit fly individuals with XY are male and individuals with XX are female; however, individuals with XXY or XXX can also be female, and individuals with X can be males.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Very few dioecious angiosperm species have XY sex determination, such as the "Silene latifolia." In these species sex determination is similar to mammals where male is XY and female is XX.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Whilst XY sex determination is the most familiar, since it is the system that humans use, there are a range of alternative systems found in nature. The inverse of the XY system (called "ZW" to distinguish it) is used in birds and many insects, in which it is the females that are heterogametic (ZW), while males are homogametic (ZZ).


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Many insects of the order Hymenoptera instead have a "haplo-diploid" system, where the females are full diploids (with all chromosomes appearing in pairs) but males are haploid (having just one copy of all chromosomes). Some other insects have the "X0 sex-determination system", where just the sex-determining chromosome vairies in ploidy (XX in females but X in males), while all other chromosomes appear in pairs in both sexes.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: In an interview for the "Rediscovering Biology" website, researcher Eric Vilain described how the paradigm changed since the discovery of the SRY gene:


title: XY sex-determination system

text: In a 2007 interview on Scientific American Eric Vilian when he was asked "It sounds as if you are describing a shift from the prevailing view that female development is a default molecular pathway to active pro-male and antimale pathways. Are there also pro-female and antifemale pathways?" He responded with


title: XY sex-determination system

text: In mammals, including humans, the SRY gene is responsible with triggering the development of non-differentiated gonads into testes, rather than ovaries. However, there are cases in which testes can develop in the absence of an SRY gene (see sex reversal). In these cases, the SOX9 gene, involved in the development of testes, can induce their development without the aid of SRY. In the absence of SRY and SOX9, no testes can develop and the path is clear for the development of ovaries. Even so, the absence of the SRY gene or the silencing of the SOX9 gene are not enough to trigger sexual differentiation of a fetus in the female direction. A recent finding suggests that ovary development and maintenance is an active process, regulated by the expression of a "pro-female" gene, FOXL2. In an interview for the "TimesOnline" edition, study co-author Robin Lovell-Badge explained the significance of the discovery:


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Looking into the genetic determinants of human sex can have wide-ranging consequences. Scientists have been studying different sex determination systems in fruit flies and animal models to attempt an understanding of how the genetics of sexual differentiation can influence biological processes like reproduction, ageing and disease.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: In humans and many other species of animals, the father determines the sex of the child. In the XY sex-determination system, the female-provided ovum contributes an X chromosome and the male-provided sperm contributes either an X chromosome or a Y chromosome, resulting in female (XX) or male (XY) offspring, respectively.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Hormone levels in the male parent affect the sex ratio of sperm in humans. Maternal influences also impact which sperm are more likely to achieve conception.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Human ova, like those of other mammals, are covered with a thick translucent layer called the zona pellucida, which the sperm must penetrate to fertilize the egg. Once viewed simply as an impediment to fertilization, recent research indicates the zona pellucida may instead function as a sophisticated biological security system that chemically controls the entry of the sperm into the egg and protects the fertilized egg from additional sperm.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Recent research indicates that human ova may produce a chemical which appears to attract sperm and influence their swimming motion. However, not all sperm are positively impacted; some appear to remain uninfluenced and some actually move away from the egg.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Maternal influences may also be possible that affect sex determination in such a way as to produce fraternal twins equally weighted between one male and one female.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: The time at which insemination occurs during the estrus cycle has been found to affect the sex ratio of the offspring of humans, cattle, hamsters, and other mammals. Hormonal and pH conditions within the female reproductive tract vary with time, and this affects the sex ratio of the sperm that reach the egg.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Aristotle believed incorrectly that the sex of an infant is determined by how much heat a man's sperm had during insemination. He wrote:


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Aristotle claimed in error that the male principle was the driver behind sex determination, such that if the male principle was insufficiently expressed during reproduction, the fetus would develop as a female.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: Nettie Stevens (working with beetles) and Edmund Beecher Wilson (working with hemiptera) are credited with independently discovering, in 1905, the chromosomal XY sex-determination system in insects: the fact that males have XY sex chromosomes and females have XX sex chromosomes. In the early 1920s, Theophilus Painter demonstrated that sex in humans (and other mammals) was also determined by the X and Y chromosomes, and the chromosomes that make this determination are carried by the spermatozoa.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: The first clues to the existence of a factor that determines the development of testis in mammals came from experiments carried out by Alfred Jost, who castrated embryonic rabbits in utero and noticed that they all developed as female.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: In 1959, C. E. Ford and his team, in the wake of Jost's experiments, discovered that the Y chromosome was needed for a fetus to develop as male when they examined patients with Turner's syndrome, who grew up as phenotypic females, and found them to be X0 (hemizygous for X and no Y). At the same time, Jacob & Strong described a case of a patient with Klinefelter syndrome (XXY), which implicated the presence of a Y chromosome in development of maleness.


title: XY sex-determination system

text: All these observations led to a consensus that a dominant gene that determines testis development (TDF) must exist on the human Y chromosome. The search for this testis-determining factor (TDF) led a team of scientists in 1990 to discover a region of the Y chromosome that is necessary for the male sex determination, which was named SRY (sex-determining region of the Y chromosome).


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław (; , ; Silesian German: "Brassel") is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, roughly from the Baltic Sea to the north and from the Sudeten Mountains to the south. , the official population of Wrocław is 672,929, with a total of 1.25 million residing in the metropolitan area, making it the third largest city in Poland.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław is the historical capital of Silesia and Lower Silesia. Today, it is the capital of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. The history of the city dates back over a thousand years; at various times, it has been part of the Kingdom of Poland, the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Habsburg monarchy of Austria, the Kingdom of Prussia and Germany. Wrocław became part of Poland again in 1945 as part of the Recovered Territories, the result of extensive border changes and expulsions after the Second World War.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław is a university city with a student population of over 130,000, making it one of the most youth-oriented cities in the country. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the University of Wrocław, previously Breslau University, has produced nine Nobel Prize laureates and is renowned for its high quality of teaching. Wrocław also possesses numerous historical landmarks, including the Main Market Square, Cathedral Island, Wrocław Opera, the National Museum and the Centennial Hall, which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city is also home to the Wrocław Zoo, which was established in 1865, making it the oldest zoological garden in Poland.


title: Wrocław

text: In 1989, 1995 and 2019 Wrocław hosted the European Youth Meetings of the Taizé Community and hosted the Eucharistic Congress in 1997 and the 2012 European Football Championship. In 2016, the city was a European Capital of Culture and the World Book Capital. Also in that year, Wrocław hosted the Theatre Olympics, World Bridge Games and the European Film Awards. In 2017, the city was host to the IFLA Annual Conference and the World Games. In 2019, it was named a UNESCO City of Literature.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław is classified as a Gamma global city by GaWC. It was placed among the top 100 cities in the world for the Mercer Quality of Living Survey 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019 and in the top 100 of the smartest cities in the world in the IESE Cities in Motion Index 2017 and 2019 report. In February 2021, "fDi Intelligence" published a report, "Global Cities of the Future 2021/2022", in which Wrocław was classified in 1st place among all medium and small cities in the world.


title: Wrocław

text: The city is believed to be named after Duke Vratislav I of Bohemia from the Czech Přemyslid dynasty, who ruled the region between 915 and 921. The city's name first appeared in the 10th century probably as "Vratislava". The oldest surviving document containing the recorded name of the city is the chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg from the early 11th century, which records the city's name as "Wrotizlava", and cites it as a seat of a new bishopric at the Congress of Gniezno. The city's first municipal seal was inscribed with "Sigillum civitatis Wratislavie".


title: Wrocław

text: The original Old Czech language version of the name was used in Latin documents, as "Vratislavia" or "Wratislavia". In the Polish language, the city's name "Wrocław" derives from the name , which is the Polish equivalent of the Czech name Vratislav. The earliest variations of this name in the Old Polish language use the letter /l/ instead of /ł/. By the 15th century, the Early New High German variations of the name, "Breslau", first began to be used. Despite the noticeable differences in spelling, the numerous German forms were still based on the original West Slavic name of the city, with the "-Vr-" sound being replaced over time by "-Br-", and the suffix "-slav-" replaced with "-slau-". These variations included "Vratizlau", "Wratislau", "Wrezlau" or "Breßlau" among others. In other languages, the city's name is: modern , , ("Vrotsláv"), ("Bresloi"), , Silesian German: "Brassel" and , "Wratislavia" or "Budorgis".


title: Wrocław

text: People born or resident in the city are known as "Vratislavians" (). During the German era, the demonym was "Breslauer".


title: Wrocław

text: In ancient times, there was a place called Budorigum at or near the site of Wrocław. It was already mapped on Claudius Ptolemy's map of AD 142–147. Settlements in the area existed from the 6th century onward during the migration period. The Ślężans, a West Slavic tribe, settled on the Oder river and erected a fortified gord on Ostrów Tumski.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław originated at the intersection of two trade routes, the Via Regia and the Amber Road. The city was first recognized in the 10th century as "Vratislavia" on account of the Bohemian duke Vratislav I's stronghold there, hence the name. When in 985, Duke Mieszko I of Poland conquered Silesia, Vratislavia's polonised form over time became "Wrocław". The town was mentioned explicitly in the year 1000 AD in connection with its promotion to an episcopal see during the Congress of Gniezno.


title: Wrocław

text: During Wrocław's early history, control over it changed hands between the Duchy of Bohemia (until 992, then 1038–1054), the Duchy of Poland and the Kingdom of Poland (992–1038 and 1054–1202). Following the fragmentation of the Kingdom of Poland, the Piast dynasty ruled the Duchy of Silesia. One of the most important events during this period was the foundation of the Diocese of Wrocław by the Polish Duke and from 1025, King Bolesław the Brave in 1000. Along with the Bishoprics of Kraków and Kołobrzeg, Wrocław was placed under the Archbishopric of Gniezno in Greater Poland, founded by Pope Sylvester II through the intercession of Polish Duke Bolesław I the Brave and Emperor Otto III in 1000, during the Gniezno Congress. In the years 1034–1038 the city was affected by the pagan reaction in Poland.


title: Wrocław

text: The city became a commercial centre and expanded to Wyspa Piasek (Sand Island), and then onto the left bank of the River Oder. Around 1000, the town had about 1,000 inhabitants. In 1109 during the , Prince Bolesław III Wrymouth defeated the King of Germany Henry V at the Battle of Hundsfeld, stopping the German advance into Poland. The medieval chronicle, "Gesta principum Polonorum" (1112–1116) by Gallus Anonymus, named Wrocław, along with Kraków and Sandomierz, as one of three capitals of the Polish Kingdom. Also, the "Tabula Rogeriana", a book written by the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi in 1154, describes Wrocław as one of the Polish cities, alongside Kraków, Gniezno, Sieradz, Łęczyca and Santok.


title: Wrocław

text: By 1139, a settlement belonging to Governor Piotr Włostowic (also known as Piotr Włast Dunin) was built, and another on the left bank of the River Oder, near the present site of the university. While the city was largely Polish, it also had communities of Bohemians (Czechs), Germans, Walloons and Jews.


title: Wrocław

text: In the 13th century, Wrocław was the political centre of the divided Polish kingdom. In April 1241, during the First Mongol invasion of Poland, the city was abandoned by its inhabitants and burnt down for strategic reasons. During the battles with the Mongols was successfully defended by Henry II the Pious.


title: Wrocław

text: After the Mongol invasion the town was partly populated by German settlers who, in the ensuing centuries, gradually became its dominant population. The city, however, retained its multi-ethnic character, a reflection of its importance as a trading post on the junction of the Via Regia and the Amber Road.


title: Wrocław

text: With the influx of settlers, the town expanded and in 1242 came under German town law. The city council used both Latin and German, and the early forms of the name "Breslau", the German name of the city, appeared for the first time in its written records. Polish gradually ceased to be used in the town books, while it survived in the courts until 1337. The enlarged town covered around , and the new main market square, surrounded by timber-frame houses, became the trade centre of the town. The original foundation, Ostrów Tumski, became its religious centre. The city gained Magdeburg rights in 1261. While the Polish Piast dynasty remained in control of the region, the ability of the city council to govern itself independently increased. In 1274 prince Henryk IV Probus gave the city its staple right. In the 13th century, two Polish monarchs were buried in Wrocław churches founded by them, Henry II the Pious in the St. Vincent church and Henryk IV Probus in the Holy Cross church.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław, which for 350 years had been mostly under Polish hegemony, fell in 1335, after the death of Henry VI the Good, to the Kingdom of Bohemia, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Between 1342 and 1344, two fires destroyed large parts of the city. In 1387 the city joined the Hanseatic League. On 5 June 1443, the city was rocked by an earthquake, estimated at ca. 6 on the Richter scale, which destroyed or seriously damaged many of its buildings.


title: Wrocław

text: Between 1469 and 1490, Wrocław was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, and king Matthias Corvinus was said to have had a Vratislavian mistress who bore him a son. In 1474, after almost a century, the city left the Hanseatic League. Also in 1474, the city was besieged by combined Polish-Czech forces. However, in November 1474, Kings Casimir IV of Poland, his son Vladislaus II of Bohemia, and Matthias Corvinus of Hungary met in the nearby village of Muchobór Wielki (present-day a district of Wrocław), and in December 1474 a ceasefire was signed according to which the city remained under Hungarian rule. The following year was marked by the publication in Wrocław of the "Statuta Synodalia Episcoporum Wratislaviensium" (1475) by Kasper Elyan, the first ever Incunable in Polish, containing the proceedings and prayers of the Wrocław bishops.


title: Wrocław

text: The Protestant Reformation reached the city in 1518 and it converted to the new rite. However, starting in 1526 Silesia was ruled by the Catholic House of Habsburg. In 1618, it supported the Bohemian Revolt out of fear of losing the right to religious freedom. During the ensuing Thirty Years' War, the city was occupied by Saxon and Swedish troops and lost thousands of inhabitants to the plague.


title: Wrocław

text: The Emperor brought in the Counter-Reformation by encouraging Catholic orders to settle in the city, starting in 1610 with the Franciscans, followed by the Jesuits, then Capuchins, and finally Ursuline nuns in 1687. These orders erected buildings that shaped the city's appearance until 1945. At the end of the Thirty Years' War, however, it was one of only a few Silesian cities to stay Protestant.


title: Wrocław

text: The Polish Municipal school opened in 1666 and lasted until 1766. Precise record-keeping of births and deaths by the city fathers led to the use of their data for analysis of mortality, first by John Graunt and then, based on data provided to him by Breslau professor Caspar Neumann, by Edmond Halley. Halley's tables and analysis, published in 1693, are considered to be the first true actuarial tables, and thus the foundation of modern actuarial science. During the Counter-Reformation, the intellectual life of the city flourished, as the Protestant bourgeoisie lost some of its dominance to the Catholic orders as patrons of the arts.


title: Wrocław

text: The city became the centre of German Baroque literature and was home to the First and Second Silesian school of poets. In the 1740s the Kingdom of Prussia annexed the city and most of Silesia during the War of the Austrian Succession. Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa ceded most of the territory in the Treaty of Breslau in 1742 to Prussia. Austria attempted to recover Silesia during the Seven Years' War at the Battle of Breslau, but they were unsuccessful. The Venetian Italian adventurer, Giacomo Casanova, stayed in Breslau in 1766.


title: Wrocław

text: During the Napoleonic Wars, it was occupied by the Confederation of the Rhine army. The fortifications of the city were levelled, and monasteries and cloisters were seized. The Protestant Viadrina European University at Frankfurt an der Oder was relocated to Breslau in 1811, and united with the local Jesuit University to create the new Silesian Frederick-William University (, now the University of Wrocław). The city became a centre of the German Liberation movement against Napoleon, and a gathering place for volunteers from all over Germany. The city was the centre of Prussian mobilisation for the campaign which ended at the Battle of Leipzig.


title: Wrocław

text: The Confederation of the Rhine had increased prosperity in Silesia and in the city. The removal of fortifications opened room for the city to expand beyond its former limits. Breslau became an important railway hub and industrial centre, notably for linen and cotton manufacture and the metal industry. The reconstructed university served as a major centre of science; Johannes Brahms later wrote his Academic Festival Overture to thank the university for an honorary doctorate awarded in 1879.


title: Wrocław

text: In 1821, the (Arch)Diocese of Breslau withdrew from dependence on the Polish archbishopric of Gniezno, and Breslau became an exempt see. On 10 October 1854, the Jewish Theological Seminary opened. The institution was the first modern rabbinical seminary in Central Europe. In 1863 the brothers Karl and Louis Stangen founded the travel agency Stangen, the second travel agency in the world.


title: Wrocław

text: The city was an important centre of the Polish secret resistance movement and the seat of a Polish uprising committee before and during the January Uprising of 1863–1864 in the Russian Partition of Poland. Local Poles took part in Polish national mourning after the Russian massacre of Polish protesters in Warsaw in February 1861, and also organized several patriotic Polish church services throughout 1861. Secret Polish correspondence, weapons, and insurgents were transported through the city. After the outbreak of the uprising in 1863, the Prussian police carried out mass searches of Polish homes, especially those of Poles who had recently come to the city. The city's inhabitants, both Poles and Germans, excluding the German aristocracy, largely sympathized with the uprising, and some Germans even joined local Poles in their secret activities. In June 1863 the city was officially confirmed as the seat of secret Polish insurgent authorities. In January 1864, the Prussian police arrested a number of members of the Polish insurgent movement.


title: Wrocław

text: The Unification of Germany in 1871 turned Breslau into the sixth-largest city in the German Empire. Its population more than tripled to over half a million between 1860 and 1910. The 1900 census listed 422,709 residents.


title: Wrocław

text: In 1890, construction began of Breslau Fortress as the city's defenses. Important landmarks were inaugurated in 1910, the "Kaiser bridge" (today Grunwald Bridge) and the "Technical University", which now houses the Wrocław University of Technology.


title: Wrocław

text: The 1900 census listed 98% of the population as German-speakers, with 5,363 Polish-speakers (1.3%), and 3,103 (0.7%) as bilingual in German and Polish. The population was 58% Protestant, 37% Catholic (including at least 2% Polish) and 5% Jewish (totaling 20,536 in the 1905 census). The Jewish community of Breslau was among the most important in Germany, producing several distinguished artists and scientists.


title: Wrocław

text: From 1912, the head of the university's Department of Psychiatry and director of the Clinic of Psychiatry ("Königlich Psychiatrischen und Nervenklinik") was Alois Alzheimer and, that same year, professor William Stern introduced the concept of IQ.


title: Wrocław

text: In 1913, the newly built Centennial Hall housed an exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the historical German Wars of Liberation against Napoleon and the first award of the Iron Cross. The Centennial Hall was built by Max Berg (1870–1947), since 2006 it is part of the world heritage of UNESCO. The central station (by Wilhelm Grapow, 1857) was one of the biggest in Germany and one of the first stations with electrified railway services. Since 1900 modern department stores like Barasch (today "Feniks") or Petersdorff (built by architect Erich Mendelsohn) were erected.


title: Wrocław

text: Following the First World War, Breslau became the capital of the newly created Prussian Province of Lower Silesia of the Weimar Republic in 1919. After the war the Polish community began holding masses in Polish at the Church of Saint Anne, and, as of 1921, at St. Martin's and a Polish School was founded by Helena Adamczewska. In 1920 a Polish consulate was opened on the Main Square.


title: Wrocław

text: In August 1920, during the Polish Silesian Uprising in Upper Silesia, the Polish Consulate and School were destroyed, while the Polish Library was burned down by a mob. The number of Poles as a percentage of the total population fell to just 0.5% after the re-emergence of Poland as a state in 1918, when many moved to Poland. Antisemitic riots occurred in 1923.


title: Wrocław

text: The city boundaries were expanded between 1925 and 1930 to include an area of with a population of 600,000. In 1929, the Werkbund opened "WuWa" () in Breslau-Scheitnig, an international showcase of modern architecture by architects of the Silesian branch of the Werkbund. In June 1930, Breslau hosted the "Deutsche Kampfspiele", a sporting event for German athletes after Germany was excluded from the Olympic Games after World War I. The number of Jews remaining in Breslau fell from 23,240 in 1925 to 10,659 in 1933. Up to the beginning of World War II, Breslau was the largest city in Germany east of Berlin.


title: Wrocław

text: Known as a stronghold of left wing liberalism during the German Empire, Breslau eventually became one of the strongest support bases of the Nazi Party, which in the 1932 elections received 44% of the city's vote, their third-highest total in all Germany.


title: Wrocław

text: After Hitler's in 1933, political enemies of the Nazis were persecuted, and their institutions closed or destroyed. The Gestapo began actions against Polish and Jewish students (see: Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau), Communists, Social Democrats, and trade unionists. Arrests were made for speaking Polish in public, and in 1938 the Nazi-controlled police destroyed the Polish cultural centre. In June 1939, Polish students were expelled from the university. Also many other people seen as "undesirable" by Nazi Germany were sent to concentration camps. A network of concentration camps and forced labour camps was established around Breslau to serve industrial concerns, including FAMO, Junkers, and Krupp. Tens of thousand of forced laborers were imprisoned there.


title: Wrocław

text: The last big event organized by the National Socialist League of the Reich for Physical Exercise, called Deutsches Turn-und-Sportfest (Gym and Sports Festivities), took place in Breslau from 26 to 31 July 1938. The Sportsfest was held to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the German Wars of Liberation against Napoleon's invasion.


title: Wrocław

text: During the invasion of Poland, which started World War II, in September 1939, the Germans carried out mass arrests of local Polish activists and banned Polish organizations, and the city was made the headquarters of the southern district of the "Selbstschutz", whose task was to persecute Poles. For most of the war, the fighting did not affect the city. During the war, the Germans opened the graves of medieval Polish monarchs and local dukes to carry out anthropological research for propaganda purposes, wanting to demonstrate German "racial purity". The remains were transported to other places by the Germans, and they have not been found to this day. In 1941 the remnants of the pre-war Polish minority in the city, as well as Polish slave labourers, organised a resistance group called Olimp. The organisation gathered intelligence, carrying out sabotage and organising aid for Polish slave workers. In September 1941 the city's 10,000 Jews were expelled from their homes and soon deported to concentration camps. Few survived the Holocaust. As the war continued, refugees from bombed-out German cities, and later refugees from farther east, swelled the population to nearly one million, including 51,000 forced labourers in 1944, and 9,876 Allied PoWs. At the end of 1944 an additional 30,000–60,000 Poles were moved into the city after the Germans crushed the Warsaw Uprising.


title: Wrocław

text: During the war the Germans operated four subcamps of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in the city. Approximately 3,400–3,800 men were imprisoned in three subcamps, among them Poles, Russians, Italians, Frenchmen, Ukrainians, Czechs, Belgians, Yugoslavs, Chinese, and about 1,500 Jewish women were imprisoned in the fourth camp. Many prisoners died, and the remaining were evacuated to the main camp of Groß-Rosen in January 1945. There were also three subcamps of the Stalag VIII-B/344 prisoner-of-war camp, and two Nazi prisons in the city, including a youth prison, with multiple forced labour subcamps.


title: Wrocław

text: In 1945, the city became part of the front lines and was the site of the brutal Siege of Breslau. Adolf Hitler had in 1944 declared Breslau to be a fortress (Festung), to be held at all costs. An attempted evacuation of the city took place in January 1945, with 18,000 people freezing to death in icy snowstorms of weather. In February 1945, the Soviet Army approached the city and the German Luftwaffe began an airlift to the besieged garrison. A large area of the city centre was demolished and turned into an airfield by the defenders. By the end of the three-month siege in May 1945, half the city had been destroyed. Breslau was the last major city in Germany to surrender, capitulating only two days before the end of the war in Europe. Civilian deaths amounted to as many as 80,000. In August the Soviets placed the city under the control of German communists.


title: Wrocław

text: Following the Yalta Conference held in February 1945 where the new geopolitics of Central Europe were decided, the terms of the Potsdam Conference decreed that with almost all of Lower Silesia, the city would become part of Poland in exchange for Poland's loss of the city of Lwów along with the massive territory of Kresy in the east, which was annexed by the Soviet Union. The Polish name of Wrocław was declared official. There had been discussion among the Western Allies to place the southern Polish-German boundary on the Glatzer Neisse, which meant post-war Germany would have been allowed to retain approximately half of Silesia, including Breslau. However, Stalin insisted the border be drawn at the Lusatian Neisse farther west.


title: Wrocław

text: Following World War II, the region became part of Poland under territorial changes defined by the Potsdam Agreement. The town's inhabitants who had not fled, or who had safely returned to their home town after the war officially had ended, were expelled between 1945 and 1949 in accordance to the Potsdam Agreement and were settled in the Soviet occupation zone or in the Allied Occupation Zones in the remainder of Germany. The city's last pre-war German school was closed in 1963.


title: Wrocław

text: The Polish population was dramatically increased by the resettlement of Poles during postwar population transfers during the forced deportations from Polish lands annexed by the Soviet Union in the east region, some of whom came from Lviv ("Lwów"), Volhynia, and the Vilnius Region. A small German minority (about 1,000 people, or 2% of the population) remains in the city, so that today the relation of Polish to German population is the reverse of what it was a hundred years ago. Traces of the German past, such as inscriptions and signs, were removed. In 1948, Wrocław organized the Recovered Territories Exhibition and the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace. Picasso's lithograph, "La Colombe" (The Dove), a traditional, realistic picture of a pigeon, without an olive branch, was created on a napkin at the Monopol Hotel in Wrocław during the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace.


title: Wrocław

text: In 1982, during martial law in Poland, the anti-communist underground organizations Fighting Solidarity and Orange Alternative were founded in Wrocław. Wrocław's dwarves, made of bronze, famously grew out of and commemorate Orange Alternative.


title: Wrocław

text: PTV Echo, the first non-state television station in Poland and in the post-communist countries, began to broadcast in Wrocław on 6 February 1990.


title: Wrocław

text: In July 1997, the city was heavily affected by a flood of the River Oder, the worst flooding in post-war Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic. About one-third of the area of the city was flooded. The smaller Widawa River also flooded the city simultaneously, worsening the damage. An earlier, equally devastating flood of the Oder river had taken place in 1903.


title: Wrocław

text: A small part of the city was also flooded during the flood of 2010. From 2012 to 2015, the was renovated and redeveloped to prevent further flooding.


title: Wrocław

text: Municipal Stadium in Wrocław, opened in 2011, hosted three matches in Group A of the UEFA Euro 2012 championship.


title: Wrocław

text: Since the end of the Cold War, Wrocław has come to terms with its German heritage, restoring its historical coat of arms and embracing the Austrian and Prussian aspects of the city's history during anniversary celebrations.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław is now a unique European city of mixed heritage, with architecture influenced by Bohemian, Austrian, and Prussian traditions, such as Silesian Gothic and its Baroque style of court builders of Habsburg Austria (Fischer von Erlach). Wrocław has a number of notable buildings by German modernist architects including the famous Centennial Hall ("Hala Stulecia" or "Jahrhunderthalle"; 1911–1913) designed by Max Berg.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław is located in the three mesoregions of the Silesian Lowlands (Wrocław Plain, Wrocław Valley, Oleśnica Plain) at an elevation of around 105–156 metres (Gajowe Hill and Maślickie Hill) above sea level. The city lies on the Oder River and its four tributaries, which supply it within the city limits – Bystrzyca, Oława, Ślęza and Widawa. In addition, the Dobra River and many streams flow through the city. The city has a sewage treatment plant on the Janówek estate.


title: Wrocław

text: There are 44 city parks and public green spaces covering around 800 hectares. The most notable are "Szczytnicki Park", "Park Południowy" (South Park) and "Anders Park". In addition, Wrocław University runs an historical Botanical garden (founded in 1811), with a salient Alpine garden, a lake and a valley.


title: Wrocław

text: In Wrocław, the presence of over 200 species of birds has been registered, of which over 100 have nesting places there. As in other large Polish cities, the most numerous are pigeons. Other common species are the sparrow, tree sparrow, siskin, rook, crow, jackdaw, magpie, swift, martin, swallow, kestrel, mute swan, mallard, coot, merganser, black-headed gull, great tit, blue tit, long-tailed tit, greenfinch, hawfinch, collared dove, common wood pigeon, fieldfare, redwing, common starling, grey heron, white stork, common chaffinch, blackbird, jay, nuthatch, bullfinch, cuckoo, waxwing, lesser spotted woodpecker, great spotted woodpecker, white-backed woodpecker, white wagtail, blackcap, black redstart, old world flycatcher, emberizidae, goldfinch, western marsh harrier, little bittern, common moorhen, reed bunting, remiz, great reed warbler, little crake, little ringed plover and white-tailed eagle.


title: Wrocław

text: In addition, the city is periodically plagued by the brown rat, especially in the Market Square and in the vicinity of eateries. Otherwise, due to the proximity of wooded areas, there are hedgehogs, foxes, wild boar, bats, martens, squirrels, deer, hares, beavers, polecats, otters, badgers, weasels, stoats and raccoon dogs. There are also occasional sightings of escaped muskrat, american mink and raccoon.


title: Wrocław

text: Air pollution is a considerable issue in Wrocław. In a report by French "Respire" organization, from 2014, Wrocław was ranked the eighth most polluted European city, with 166 days of bad air quality per year. Heavy air pollution mainly occurs in the colder months, during autumn and winter.


title: Wrocław

text: According to Wrocław University research from 2017, high concentration of particular matters (PM2.5 and PM 10) in the air causes 942 premature deaths of Wrocław inhabitants per year. Air pollution also causes 3297 cases of bronchitis among Wrocław's children per year. Approximately 84% of residents believe that air pollution is a serious social problem, according to a poll from May 2017, and 73% of people believe that air quality is poor.


title: Wrocław

text: In 2012, there were 71 days, when the PM10 standards, set by Cleaner Air For Europe Directive, were exceeded. In 2014, there were 104 such days.


title: Wrocław

text: In 2014, the inhabitants founded an organization called the Lower Silesian Smog Alert ("Dolnośląski Alarm Smogowy, DAS"), to address the air pollution problem. Its goals are to educate the public and to reduce emission of harmful substances.


title: Wrocław

text: According to the Köppen climate classification, Wrocław has an oceanic climate ("Cfb") if to adopt the isotherm for the mean temperature of the coldest month, but is on the border with the humid continental climate ("Dfb") if is assumed to be the border. The position of Wrocław in the Silesian Lowlands, which are themselves located just north of the Sudetes and to the southwest of the Trzebnickie Hills, creates a favourable environment for accumulation of heat in the Oder river valley between Wrocław and Opole. Wrocław is therefore the warmest city in Poland, among those tracked by the (IMGW), with the mean annual temperature of .


title: Wrocław

text: The city experiences relatively mild and dry winters, but with the skies frequently overcast; summers are warm and generally sunny, however, that is the period when most precipitation occurs, which often falls during thunderstorms. The city also sometimes experiences foehn-like conditions, particularly when the wind blows from the south or the south-west. In addition to that, the temperatures in the city centre often tend to be higher than on the outskirts due to the urban heat island effect. Snow may fall in any month from October to May but normally does so in winter; the snow cover of at least stays on the ground for an average of 27.5 days per year – one of the lowest in Poland. The highest temperature in Wrocław recognised by IMGW was noted on 8 August 2015 (), though thermometers at the meteorological station managed by the University of Wrocław indicated on that day. The lowest temperature was recorded on 11 February 1956 ().


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław is the capital city of Lower Silesian Voivodeship, a province (voivodeship) created in 1999. It was previously the capital of Wrocław Voivodeship. The city is a separate urban gmina and city-county. It is also the seat of Wrocław County, which adjoins but does not include the city.


title: Wrocław

text: Since 1990, the city has been divided into 48 district quarters ("osiedle") – Bieńkowice, Biskupin-Sępolno-Dąbie-Bartoszowice, Borek, Brochów, Gaj, Gajowice, Gądów-Popowice Płd., Grabiszyn-Grabiszynek, Huby, Jagodno, Jerzmanowo-Jarnołtów-Strachowice-Osiniec, Karłowice-Różanka, Klecina, Kleczków, Kowale, Krzyki-Partynice, Księże, Kuźniki, Leśnica, Lipa Piotrowska, Maślice, Muchobór Mały, Muchobór Wielki, Nadodrze, Nowy Dwór, Ołbin, Ołtaszyn, Oporów, Osobowice-Rędzin, Pawłowice, Pilczyce-Kozanów-Popowice Płn., Plac Grunwaldzki, Polanowice-Poświętne-Ligota, Powstańców Śląskich, Pracze Odrzańskie, Przedmieście Oławskie, Przedmieście Świdnickie, Psie Pole-Zawidawie, Sołtysowice, Stare Miasto, Strachocin-Swojczyce-Wojnów, Szczepin, Świniary, Tarnogaj, Widawa, Wojszyce, Zacisze-Zalesie-Szczytniki, and Żerniki.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław is currently governed by the city's mayor and a municipal legislature known as the city council. The city council is made up of 39 councilors and is directly elected by the city's inhabitants. The remit of the council and president extends to all areas of municipal policy and development planning, up to and including development of local infrastructure, transport and planning permission. However, it is not able to draw taxation directly from its citizens, and instead receives its budget from the Polish national government whose seat is in Warsaw.


title: Wrocław

text: The city's current mayor is Jacek Sutryk, who has served in this position since 2018. The first mayor of Wrocław after the war was Bolesław Drobner, appointed to the position on 14 March 1945, even before the surrender of Festung Breslau.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław is the second-wealthiest of the large cities in Poland after Warsaw. The city is also home to the largest number of leasing and debt collection companies in the country, including the largest European Leasing Fund as well as numerous banks. Due to the proximity of the borders with Germany and the Czech Republic, Wrocław and the region of Lower Silesia is a large import and export partner with these countries.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław's industry manufactures buses, railroad cars, home appliances, chemicals, and electronics. The city houses factories and development centres of many foreign and domestic corporations, such as WAGO Kontakttechnik, Siemens, Bosch, Whirlpool Corporation, Nokia Networks, Volvo, HP, IBM, Google, Opera Software, Bombardier Transportation, WABCO and others. Wrocław is also the location of offices for large Polish companies including Getin Holding, AmRest, Polmos, and MCI Management SA. Additionally, Kaufland Poland has its main headquarters in the city.


title: Wrocław

text: Many high-tech companies are located in the Wrocław Technology Park, such as Baluff, CIT Engineering, Caisson Elektronik, ContiTech, Ericsson, Innovative Software Technologies, IBM, IT-MED, IT Sector, LiveChat Software, Mitsubishi Electric, Maas, PGS Software, Technology Transfer Agency Techtra and Vratis. In Biskupice Podgórne (Community Kobierzyce) there are factories of LG (LG Display, LG Electronics, LG Chem, LG Innotek), Dong Seo Display, Dong Yang Electronics, Toshiba, and many other companies, mainly from the electronics and home appliances sectors, while the Nowa Wieś Wrocławska factory and distribution centre of Nestlé Purina and factories a few other enterprises.


title: Wrocław

text: The city is the seat of Wrocław Research Centre EIT+, which contains, inter alia, geological research laboratories to the unconventional and Lower Silesian Cluster of Nanotechnology. The logistics centres DHL, FedEx and UPS are based in Wrocław. Furthermore, it is a major centre for the pharmaceutical industry (U.S. Pharmacia, Hasco-Lek, Galena, Avec Pharma, 3M, Labor, S-Lab, Herbapol, and Cezal).


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław is home to Poland's largest shopping mall – (pl. Aleja Bielany) and Bielany Trade Center, located in Bielany Wrocławskie where stores such as Auchan, Decathlon, Leroy Merlin, Makro, Tesco, IKEA, Jula, OBI, Castorama, Black Red White, Poco, E. Wedel, Cargill, Prologis and Panattoni can be found.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław is a major transport hub, situated at the crossroad of many routes linking Western and Central Europe with the rest of Poland. The city is skirted on the south by the A4 highway, which is part of the European route E40, extending from the Polish-German to the Polish-Ukrainian border across southern Poland.


title: Wrocław

text: The 672-kilometre highway beginning at Jędrzychowice connects Lower Silesia with Opole and the industrial Upper Silesian metropolis, Kraków, Tarnów and Rzeszów. It also provides easy access to German cities such as Dresden, Leipzig, Magdeburg and with the A18 highway Berlin, Hamburg.


title: Wrocław

text: The toll-free A8 bypass (Wrocław ring road) around the west and north of the city connects the A4 highway with three major routes – S5 expressway leading to Poznań, Bydgoszcz; the S8 express road towards Oleśnica, Łódź, Warsaw, Białystok; and the National Road 8 to Prague, Brno and other townships in the Czech Republic.


title: Wrocław

text: Traffic congestion is a significant issue in Wrocław as in most Polish cities; in early 2020 it was ranked as the fifth-most congested city in Poland, and 41st in the world. On average, a car driver in Wrocław annually spends seven days and two hours in a traffic jam. Roadblocks, gridlocks and narrow cobblestone streets around the Old Town are considerable obstacles for drivers. The lack of parking space is also a major setback; private lots or on-street pay bays are the most common means of parking. A study in 2019 has revealed that there are approximately 130 vehicles per each parking spot, and the search for an unoccupied bay takes on average eight minutes.


title: Wrocław

text: The city is served by Copernicus Airport Wrocław (coded WRO), situated around 10 kilometres southwest from the central precinct. The airport handles passenger flights with LOT Polish Airlines, Buzz, Ryanair, Wizz Air, Lufthansa, Eurowings, Air France, KLM, Scandinavian Airlines, Swiss International Air Lines and air cargo connections. In 2019 over a 3.5 million passengers passed through the airport, placing it fifth on the list of busiest airports in Poland. Among the permanent and traditional destinations are Warsaw, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Zürich and Budapest. Low-cost flights are common among British, Italian, Spanish and Ukrainian travellers, based on the number of destinations. Seasonal charter flights are primarily targeted at Polish holidaymakers travelling to Southern Europe and North Africa.


title: Wrocław

text: The main rail station is Wrocław Główny, which is the largest railway station in Poland by the number of passengers served (21,2 million passengers a year), and perhaps the most important railroad junction alongside Warsaw Central station. The station is supported by PKP Intercity, Polregio, Koleje Dolnośląskie and Leo Express. There are direct connections to Szczecin, Poznań, and to Warsaw Central through Łódź Fabryczna station. There is also a regular connection to Berlin Hauptbahnhof and Wien Hauptbahnhof (Vienna), as well as indirect to Praha hlavní nádraží (Prague) and Budapest-Nyugati with one transfer depending on the carrier.


title: Wrocław

text: Adjacent to the railway station, is a central bus station located in the basement of the shopping mall Wroclavia, with services offered by PKS, Neobus, Flixbus, Sindbad, and others.


title: Wrocław

text: The public transport in Wrocław comprises 99 bus lines and a well-developed network of 23 tram lines (with a length over 200 kilometres) operated by the Municipal Transport Company MPK (). Rides are paid for, tickets can be purchased in vending machines, which are located at bus stops, as well as in the vending machines located in the vehicle (payment contactless payment card, the ticket is saved on the card). The tickets are available for purchase in the electronic form via mobile app: mPay, Apple Pay, SkyCash, Mobill, Google Pay. Tickets are one-ride or temporary (0.25, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 24, 48, 72, or 168 hours).


title: Wrocław

text: There are 1200 km of cycling paths including about 100 km paths on flood embankments. Wrocław has a bike rental network called the City Bike ("Wrocławski Rower Miejski"). It has 2000 bicycles and 200 self-service stations. In addition to regular bicycles, tandem, cargo, electric, folding, tricycles, children's, and handbikes are available, operating every year from 1 March to 30 November. During winter (December – February) 200 bikes are available in the system.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław possesses a scooter-sharing system of Lime, Bird, Bolt and Hive Free Now – motorized scooter rental is available using a mobile application.


title: Wrocław

text: Electronic car rental systems include Traficar, Panek CarSharing (hybrid cars), GoScooter and electric scooters using the mobile application.


title: Wrocław

text: A gondola lift over the Oder called Polinka began operation in 2013. Wrocław also has a river port on the Oder and several marinas.


title: Wrocław

text: In December 2020, the population of Wrocław was estimated at 641,928 individuals, of which 342,215 were women and 299,713 were men. Since 2011, the population has been steadily rising, with a 0.142% increase between 2019 and 2020, and a 2.167% increase in the years 2011–2020. In 2018, the crude birth rate stood at 11.8 and the mortality rate at 11.1 per 1,000 residents. The median age in 2018 was 43 years. The city's population is aging significantly; between 2013 and 2018, the number of seniors (per Statistics Poland – men aged 65 or above and women aged 60 or above) surged from 21.5% to 24.2%.


title: Wrocław

text: Historically, the city's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and 20th centuries; in the year 1900 approximately 422,709 people were registered as residents and by 1933 the population was already 625,000. The strongest growth was recorded from 1900 to 1910, with almost 100,000 new residents within the city limits. Although the city was overwhelmingly German-speaking, the ethnic composition based on heritage or place of birth was mixed. According to a statistical report from 2000, around 43% of all inhabitants in 1910 were born outside Silesia and migrated into the city, mostly from the contemporary regions of Greater Poland (then the Prussian Partition of Poland) or Pomerania. Poles and Jews were among the most prominent active minorities. Simultaneously, the city's territorial expansion and incorporation of surrounding townships further strengthened population growth.


title: Wrocław

text: Following the end of the Second World War and post-1945 expulsions of the pre-war population, Wrocław became predominantly Polish-speaking. New incomers were primarily resettled from areas in the east which Poland lost (Vilnius and Lviv), or from other provinces, notably the regions of Greater Poland, Lublin, Białystok and Rzeszów. At the end of 1947, the city's population was estimated at 225,000 individuals, most of whom were migrants. German nationals who stayed were either resettled in the late 1940s and 1950s, or assimilated.


title: Wrocław

text: Contemporary Wrocław has one of the highest concentration of foreigners in Poland alongside Warsaw and Poznań; a significant majority are migrant workers from Ukraine; others came from Italy, Spain, South Korea, India, Russia and Turkey. No exact statistic exists on the number of temporary residents from abroad. Many are students studying at Wrocław's schools and institutions of higher learning.


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław's population is predominantly Roman Catholic, like the rest of Poland. The diocese was founded in the city as early as 1000, it was one of the first dioceses in the country at that time. Now the city is the seat of a Catholic Archdiocese.


title: Wrocław

text: Prior to World War II, Breslau was mostly inhabited by Protestants, followed by a large Roman Catholic and a significant Jewish minority. In 1939, of 620,976 inhabitants 368,464 were Protestants (United Protestants; mostly Lutherans and minority Reformed; in the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union), 193,805 Catholics, 2,135 other Christians and 10,659 Jews. Wrocław had the third largest Jewish population of all cities in Germany before the war. Its White Stork Synagogue was completed in 1840, and rededicated in 2010. Four years later, in 2014, it celebrated its first ordination of four rabbis and three cantors since the Holocaust. The Polish authorities together with the German Foreign Minister attended the official ceremony.


title: Wrocław

text: Post-war resettlements from Poland's ethnically and religiously more diverse former eastern territories (known in Polish as "Kresy") and the eastern parts of post-1945 Poland ("see Operation Vistula") account for a comparatively large portion of Greek Catholics and Orthodox Christians of mostly Ukrainian and Lemko descent. Wrocław is also unique for its "Dzielnica Czterech Świątyń" (Borough of Four Temples) — a part of Stare Miasto (Old Town) where a synagogue, a Lutheran church, a Roman Catholic church and an Eastern Orthodox church stand near each other. Other Christian denominations present in Wrocław include Adventists, Baptists, Free Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, Methodists and Pentecostals. There are also minor associations practicing and promoting Rodnovery neopaganism.


title: Wrocław

text: In 2007, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Wrocław established the Pastoral Centre for English Speakers, which offers Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, as well as other sacraments, fellowship, retreats, catechesis and pastoral care for all English-speaking Catholics and non-Catholics interested in the Catholic Church. The Pastoral Centre is under the care of Order of Friars Minor, Conventual (Franciscans) of the Kraków Province in the parish of .


title: Wrocław

text: Wrocław is the third largest educational centre of Poland, with 135,000 students in 30 colleges which employ some 7,400 staff.


title: Wrocław

text: The Old Town of Wrocław is listed in the Registry of Objects of Cultural Heritage and is, since 1994, on Poland's prestigious list of National Monuments. Several architectural landmarks and edifices are one of the best examples of Brick Gothic and Baroque architecture in the country. Fine examples of Neoclassicism, Gründerzeit and Historicism are also scattered across the city's central precinct. The Wrocław Opera House, Monopol Hotel, , Ossolineum, the National Museum and the castle-like District Court are among some of the grandest and most recognizable historic structures. There are several examples of Art Nouveau and Modernism in pre-war retail establishments such as the Barasch-Feniks, and Renoma department stores.


title: Wrocław

text: The Ostrów Tumski (Cathedral Island) is the oldest section of the city; it was once an isolated islet between the branches of the Oder River. The Wrocław Cathedral, one of the tallest churches in Poland, was erected in the mid 10th century and later expanded over the next hundreds of years. The island is also home to five other Christian temples and churches, the , the Archdiocese Museum, a 9.5-metre 18th-century monument dedicated to Saint John of Nepomuk, historic tenements and the steel Tumski Bridge from 1889. A notable attraction are 102 original gas lanterns which are manually lit each evening by a cloaked lamplighter.