Świnoujście
— — the spa town the river splits in three.
Not only on a wall.
“A Baltic seaside town spread across three islands at the mouth of the Świna, where the river meets the open sea. The wide white-sand beach runs west into the German island of Usedom without a line on the ground, and the long promenade carries cyclists, walkers, and the smell of smoked fish from the harbour. A nineteenth-century lighthouse, one of the tallest brick towers on the Baltic, watches the channel where ferries cross day and night. The town has been a spa since the 1820s, and the wicker beach baskets still come out at the first warm week of May. from the studio
Świnoujście, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Świnoujście is a Polish city on the Baltic Sea at the mouth of the Świna river, spread across the islands of Usedom, Wolin, and Karsibór and forty-some smaller islets. It is the westernmost city in Poland and the only one whose main inhabited area lies on the German island of Usedom, reached from the rest of the country by ferry or, since 2023, by a tunnel under the Świna. The city has about 41,000 residents and sits in the West Pomeranian Voivodeship, bordering the German seaside resorts of Ahlbeck, Heringsdorf, and Bansin along an open coastline.
The Baltic here is shallow and slow to warm, reaching about eighteen degrees Celsius at the height of summer, with a beach of clean white quartz sand twelve kilometers long and up to a hundred meters wide. The Świnoujście Lighthouse, completed in 1857 and standing 64.8 meters tall, is the tallest lighthouse on the Baltic and the second tallest brick lighthouse in the world. The harbour handles ferry traffic to Ystad in Sweden and Trelleborg, freight terminals, and a Polish naval base, all separated from the bathing coast by the long curve of the western breakwater.
Most visitors arrive from Berlin, about two and a half hours by car or by the Usedomer Bäderbahn regional train, which terminates at Świnoujście Centrum station. From Szczecin, the new Świna Tunnel opened in 2023 and made the crossing a few minutes rather than a ferry queue. The German seaside resorts of Ahlbeck, Heringsdorf, and Bansin sit a flat fifteen-kilometer walk or cycle west along the same beach. The high season runs from late May through early September, with the wicker Strandkorb chairs out on the sand and a beach promenade that lights up into the evening.