In the Middle Ages, Zabłocie was an important salt port that handled salt from the mines located at Wieliczka, just 11 kilometres from the site of Garden Residence. For a long time, however, the area was regularly flooded by the river Vistula and started to develop only following the building of reliable flood control facilities to become a manufacturing centre in the 19th and 20th centuries. Small stockyards, warehouses, workshops and factories populated vast spaces with no residential development. There was a glass mill, a bakery, a soap factory, a distillery and the famous Emalia pot factory that was purchased by Oskar Schindler in 1939.