Weichsel

Weichsel is the German name for the Vistula River, the longest river in Poland, with a length of about 1,047 kilometers. It rises in the Barania Góra in the Silesian Beskids and flows generally northeast through southern and central Poland, passing Kraków and Warsaw, before emptying into the Baltic Sea via the Vistula Delta near Gdańsk and the Żuławy Wiślane. The river drains a basin of roughly 190,000 square kilometers.

The name Weichsel is used chiefly in German-language sources; in Polish the river is Wisła, and in English sources it is usually referred to as the Vistula. The term Weichsel also appears in geology as part of the Weichselian glaciation, the last major glaciation of northern Europe during the Late Pleistocene, with the name deriving from the same river region.

Historically, the Vistula/Weichsel has been a major transportation and trade route, linking Baltic ports with inland Poland and facilitating medieval and early modern commerce, including connections with the Hanseatic League. In modern times the river has been regulated for navigation and flood control, with dams, locks, and dredging along its course, and a large delta region near the coast forming one of Poland’s significant estuarine areas.