🇵🇱 The colours of Poland

The flag is white over red. The colours come from the national arms, a white eagle on a red shield, and were made official in 1831.

Crimson was the colour of the Polish nobility. Only nobles could wear it, and karmazyn, crimson man, came to mean a noble of old family.

The logo of Solidarity, the free trade union founded in the Gdansk shipyard in 1980, is its name in red letters that look like a crowd carrying a flag.

Amber washed up on the Baltic shore is called the gold of the north. Gdansk has been a centre for working it since the Middle Ages.

The white of the flag stands for the white eagle of the arms. The national football team is known as the Bialo-Czerwoni, the White and Reds.

After Russian troops fired on crowds in Warsaw in 1861, women across Poland put on black dresses and black jewellery as a sign of national mourning. It lasted for years.

The Black Madonna of Czestochowa is an icon of Mary and the child Jesus with darkened faces. It is the most revered image in the country, and pilgrims walk for days to see it.