POLAND: For the past two weeks the city has marked the beginnings of solidarity writes Marie O'Halloran
Passengers emerging from the main railway station cannot miss the massive banner declaring that it "started in Gdansk".
The banner covers much of the exterior of an office block across the road from the station. It displays framed photos, starting with one of a young and smiling Lech Walesa being carried triumphantly on the shoulders of his colleagues.
That frame falls in a domino effect on to other photos of political leaders, symbolising the fall of communisn in eastern bloc capitals from Berlin to Prague, and finally in Ukraine, which went through its own tumultuous but ultimately peaceful "orange revolution" last year.
In other parts of Poland there have been commemorations on a smaller scale to celebrate today's 25th anniversary of the agreement which led to the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc. It eventually culminated in an independent Poland, and was quickly followed by the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Gdansk is the home of Solidarity - Solidarnosc to Poles - and for the past two weeks the city has commemorated its beginnings in 1980 through exhibitions, conferences, books and concerts.
The events marking the anniversary culminate today with a Mass in Solidarity Square in front of the shipyard. This is the site of a poignant monument to "Fallen Shipyard Workers".
Three tall steel crosses with anchors at the top and a number of bronze sculpted plates at the base commemorate the 44 people killed by Soviet forces during riots in 1970, including three shipyard workers murdered in front of the gates.
The erection of the monument was one of the key demands made by the workers during the 1980 strikes and it was installed in December 1980. It was the first memorial erected during the Soviet era which commemorated victims of Soviet forces.
One of the plates contains an inscription written by Polish nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz. One version of the translation is: "You who have harmed simple man, mocking him with your laughter, can kill one, but another is born, and your deeds and words will be written down."
The memorial includes the cement footprints of Pope John Paul II. On another wall, the names of all those killed in 1970 are inscribed in bronze.
Inside the shipyard is another moving memorial. The "Road to Freedom" is an exhibition depicting the history of the struggle for independence, including documents, photographs, art installations and other artefacts such as the wooden boards listing the 21 main demands of the workers, including the right to strike.
Agata, a student who is leaving for Italy next month to study there, has mixed feelings about Walesa, Solidarity's icon. "I wish that he got more education," she says. "He did not finish high school. Don't get me wrong.
"He is a great man - he is democracy in Poland. If it were not for him, I don't know where we would be. He and the Pope brought democracy to Poland, but he is not a politician."
For Agata and others, the achievements of the charismatic Walesa in leading the struggle for democracy have been overshadowed by his subsequent roles. He became Poland's first democratically-elected president and served for five years, but he paid for his autocratic and blunt style, receiving only 1 per cent of the vote when he sought re-election in 1995.
"He would say the wrong thing," Agata says, a view echoed by another student, Margoretka. "He was not a good ambassador abroad," she says.
But there is praise amid the criticism. "People know the mistakes Walesa made and what he did wrong. But we know what he did for Poland and democracy, and people will always remember that," Margoretka said.