Gliwice

Gliwice is a city in Upper Silesia in the Silesian Voivodeship of southern Poland, on the Klodnica river, a tributary of the Oder. First mentioned as a town in 1276 and granted town rights by Duke Wladyslaw Opolski, the city had 175,102 permanent residents as of 31 December 2021, the nineteenth largest in Poland and third largest in the Metropolis GZM conurbation. Gliwice hosted the first coke-fired blast furnace on the European continent, built in 1796, which helped make it a major nineteenth century industrial center, and its Radio Tower was the site of the Gleiwitz incident of 31 August 1939, staged by Germany as a false pretext for its invasion of Poland at the start of the Second World War. The city is also home to the Silesian University of Technology, with more than 20,000 students.