Since the late 19th century the city became a holiday resort for the inhabitants of nearby Danzig, as well as wealthy aristocrats from Berlin, Warsaw, and Königsberg. Poles visited the city in large numbers and the spa was very popular among the Polish intellectual elite, to the extent that the early 20th-century Polish writer named it "the extension of Warsaw to the Baltic Sea". Germans and Russians also visited the city. At the beginning of the 20th century it was a favourite spa of Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany.