Swinoujscie is divided into three islands. The city center and the spa district are located on the west bank of the Swine on the island of Usedom. The freshness port, the train station and the industrial areas are on the east bank of the island of Wollin. A small part of the city oversleeps the time on the island of Kaseburg (Kasibór) between the Piast Canal (formerly Kaiser Wilhelm Canal), Alter Swine and the Stettiner Haff.

Until the 18th century, Swinoujscie was a small fishing village that initially belonged to Sweden and fell to Prussia in 1720. Under the rule of Frederick the Great, the Swine was made navigable and a port was built that quickly gained importance. The small fishing village developed so economically splendid that it received city rights in 1765. The German writer Theodor Fontane spent part of his childhood in Swinoujscie, where his father ran the Adler pharmacy. Fontane later described his impression of the city in the book "My childhood":

Swinoujscie was an unattractive nest when we moved in in summer 1827, but at the same time it was a place of special charm. If you chose the church square as an observation post, and our pharmacy was one of the enclosing houses, although little could be said as good, although the main street passed here, you gave up the city center and went to the 'stream', as the Swine was called , the previously unfavorable opinion turned into its opposite.

The port also flourished in the 19th century. Steamships ran regularly to East Prussia, Copenhagen and Bornholm. Construction projects were started. This is how the two jetties, each over 1,000 m long, were created at the port entrance. Erratic boulders from the Pomeranian area served as building material. A navigational symbol in the form of a mill has been decorating the western breakwater since 1874. It has become the symbol of the city and is shown on almost every postcard. In order to protect the harbor entrance not only from the rigors of nature, but also from enemies, fortifications were built on both sides of the Swine in the middle of the 19th century. The Swinemünde port only got competition when the Kaiserfahrt Canal (now Kanał Piastowski) was built at the end of the 19th century, which also enables large ships to sail to Szczecin.

Swinoujscie naval base

Fontane did not find the city center particularly appealing. Not much has changed. At the end of World War II, the city was bombed several times. On March 12, 1945, bombers of the 8th USAAF Type B 17 and B 24 flew the largest attack on Swinoujscie, which was overcrowded with refugees and German soldiers. The aim of the tactical attack in support of the advancing Red Army was the port with its military facilities, the shipyards and the numerous warships. At that time, Swinoujscie was the most important German naval base in the Baltic region alongside Kiel. About 4,500 people are said to have lost their lives in the attack. Most of them were buried on the Golm, a former recreation area. The Red Army and the British Royal Air Force also bombed Swinoujscie. A monument commemorating the British pilots who died in the attack on the armored cruiser "Lützow" on April 16, 1945 is on the island of Kasibór.

At the end of the war, 55 percent of the city was in ruins. In contrast to Danzig (Gdańsk), Breslau (Wrocław) and Warsaw (Warszawa), the city center of Swinoujscie was not rebuilt true to the original. The vacant lots left by the war were closed with faceless new buildings that still shape the cityscape today. Only here and there are houses from before the Second World War. The home of Theodor Fontana, in which the pharmacy was located, is not one of them. It stood in today's Marynarzy 7 Street. A plaque on the facade of the successor building commemorates the writer.

Swinoujscie still lives on holidaymakers today. The spa district extends north of downtown Swinemünde. In addition to magnificent villas from the 19th and early 20th centuries, modern apartment houses and hotels characterize the spa district, which is separated from the Baltic Sea by a wide sandy beach. The Kurpark still invites you to take long walks.