Sightseeing time
Gdynia Modernist City Centre is a place where history can be discovered by walking through the streets of the city and observing its architecture.
Within just a few decades, Gdynia developed from a small seaside village into a modern port city. This remarkable transformation can be seen most clearly here, in architecture that is bold, functional and inspired by the ideas of modernism.
Today, the area of Gdynia Modernist City Centre forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage. In July 2026, 87.9 hectares of the historic city centre were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The property includes an urban layout in which the traditional street grid and continuous street frontages combine established principles of urban development with modernist ideas. Functional architecture and carefully planned streets form a coherent and distinctive centre. These attributes help explain why this part of the city has been recognised as a place of Outstanding Universal Value. Gdynia Modernist City Centre was conceived as a modern city in which the relationship with the sea was to form the basis of the entire urban composition.
UNESCO Trail – Gdynia Modernist City Centre
Distance: approximately 3.5 km
Walking time: approximately 2 hours
UNESCO Trail – Gdynia Modernist City Centre - places along the route
Konstytucji Square – a testament to the various stages of the city’s development
1. Gdynia Główna Railway Stadion / 1 Konstytucji Square
2. District Court / 5 Konstytucji Square
Jana z Kolna Street – the former border between the city, the port and the railway
3. City Market Hall Complex 36/38 Wójta Radtkego Street
10 Lutego Street – the main compositional axis of the city centre, the west – east / city – sea axis
4. Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) Office Building / currently a seat of Gdynia City Hall / no. 24, 10 Lutego Street
5. Residential House of the Pension Fund of the Employees of the National Development Bank, known as ‘Bankowiec’ / no. 27-31, 3 Maja Street
6. Post and Telegraph Office / no. 10, 10 Lutego Street
7. National Development Bank (BGK) / no. 8, 10 Lutego Street
8. Bolesław and Genowefa Orłowski Apartment House / no. 5, 10 Lutego Street
Abrahama Street – a ‘woonerf’ and resident-friendly space
9. Augustyn Krauze Apartment House, a.k.a. ‘Mayor’s House’ / 25 Abrahama Street
10. Izrael Reich and Wolf Birnbaum Apartment House / 28 Abrahama Street
Świętojańska Street – the main north – south commercial axis / port – city axis
11. PAGED Apartment House / 44 Świętojańska Street
12. Franciszka Glasenapp Apartment House / 42 Świętojańska Street
13. Gdynia Modernism InfoBox / 30 Świętojańska Street
The Grand District – the city’s gateway to the sea – Kościuszki Square
14. Adam Jurkowski Apartment House / 16 Kościuszki Square
15. Zygmunt Peszkowski Apartment House / 14 Kościuszki Square
16. Stanisław Pręczkowski Apartment Hous/ 10/12 Kościuszki Square
The South Pier – an artificial one
17. Polish Sailor’s House – currently the Faculty of Navigation at the Gdynia Maritime University / 3 Jana Pawła II Avenue
18. Gdynia Aquarium – former Maritime Station / 1 Jana Pawła II Avenue
General Mariusz Zaruski Sailing Basin and City Centre Beach
Konstytucji Square – a testament to the various stages of the city’s development
Konstytucji Square is the space in front of the main railway station and became one of the important starting points for planning modern Gdynia. For people arriving here by rail, it was and remains their first point of encounter with the city. The designers, Roman Feliński and Adam Kuncewicz, used the square as an element defining the location and orientation of other parts of the city. It is an example of a modern approach to urban planning in which the port, railway and roads acquired key importance for the city’s development.
The present Gdynia Główna railway station (1 Konstytucji Square) was built in 1950-1957. It was designed by Wacław Tomaszewski, an architect well known for his interwar works in Gdynia. The lower, two-storey part facing Konstytucji Square contains the public areas of the station. On the track side is the higher, four-storey office section. The interior contains remarkable mosaics by Teresa Pągowska and Hanna Żuławska, depicting the port of Gdynia, two running winged horses and a winged wheel – a symbol of the railway – above the entrance to the former restaurant hall, now occupied by McDonald’s, as well as two other compositions showing marine flora and fauna and the masts of sailing ships. It is also worth taking a closer look at the spectacular ceiling painting in the restaurant, made under the supervision of Professor Juliusz Studnicki. It depicts a dragon, a bear, the sun and several zodiac signs. The station underwent extensive restoration in 2010-2012.
Opposite the square stands the District Court in Gdynia (5 Konstytucji Square), designed by Zbigniew Kupiec, Tadeusz Sieczkowski and Roman Sołtyński in 1936 following a nationwide architectural competition. It is one of the most characteristic examples of Gdynia’s modernist architecture, with a dynamic composition: a central rectangular volume containing the entrance and a tall entrance hall is flanked by two symmetrical wings gently curved in an arc. Original elements of the interior furnishings and finishes have survived, including terrazzo floors, pillars with stucco finishes imitating marble, wooden benches in the halls, and some of the original door woodwork. The original interior arrangement of the courtrooms, including oak furniture, has also been well preserved.
The Gdynia Municipal Market Halls Complex (36/38 Wójta Radtkego Street) was built in 1936-1938 to designs by Jerzy Müller and Stefan Reychman. The complex, one of the notable achievements of Polish interwar architecture, consists of several parts, the most distinctive being the so-called arched hall. Its unique structural system consists of nine massive steel arches, each with a span of approximately 35 metres. Their rhythm can be perceived both outside and inside the hall. Large glazed surfaces fill the hall with daylight and give the structure a sense of lightness. The complex is complemented by the lower so-called flat roof hall, unloading ramps and a small fish hall architecturally separated from the other sections. Original floors made of massive ceramic tiles have been preserved inside, together with specially profiled elements serving as drainage channels.
The market halls continue to perform their original commercial function. The arched hall also houses the Kameralne Museum dedicated to the history of the complex, while the basement is used by the Halo Kultura association as a co-working space for artists.
The main compositional axis of the city centre, the west – east / city – sea axis
Gdynia’s principal compositional axis is an exceptional urban arrangement running along 10 Lutego Street, through Kościuszki Square and the South Pier towards the sea. The continuous urban frontage of 10 Lutego Street gradually gives way to the broad open space of Kościuszki Square and then to the open waterfront landscape of Jana Pawła II Avenue. The axis opens a panoramic view towards the sea. It is not merely a road but above all a symbol of Gdynia – a city whose development was closely connected with the sea and the port.
At the intersection of 10 Lutego and 3 Maja Streets, stands one of the most characteristic examples of Gdynia modernism: the former Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) building (24 10 Lutego Street), designed by Warsaw architect Roman Piotrowski and erected in 1935-1936. It was entered in the register of historic monuments as early as 1972, as the first modernist building in Poland and the third protected monument in Gdynia. Today it houses Gdynia City Hall.
Its simple geometric composition is worth close attention. The building consists of volumes of different heights arranged into a dynamic whole. A rounded corner projects beyond the building line, giving the structure an almost streamlined form reminiscent of a ship’s hull – a characteristic reference to Gdynia’s maritime identity.
The light, smooth facade is intersected by broad bands of windows, while dark granite at ground-floor level contrasts with light Pińczów limestone on the upper storeys. This makes the building appear light and dynamic. The ground floor once contained shops and one of Gdynia’s best-known cafés, Café Bałtyk. Today it houses the Gdynia Modernism Centre and the City Tourist Information Office (fb/informacjaturystycznagdynia, visit.gdynia.pl), a place where visitors can learn more about modernist Gdynia, see architectural details, use the reference library, watch films, participate in meetings and educational activities and obtain information about routes through the modernist city centre.
One of the most characteristic and largest pre-war residential buildings in the Gdynia Modernist City Centre is the residential building of the Pension Fund of the Employees of the National Development Bank, popularly known as Bankowiec, at 27-31 3 Maja Street. Designed by Warsaw architect Stanisław Ziołowski, the apartment house has three wings, the longest running along 3 Maja Street. The building was constructed in stages between 1936 and 1939.
It is an exceptional example of the so-called Streamline Moderne. The rounded corner tower, topped by a flagpole, evokes a ship’s bridge. Horizontal bands of windows and loggias resemble ship’s sides, while round windows on the courtyard side resemble portholes. The two uppermost storeys are retreated, referring to the arrangement of ship’s decks while visually reducing the building’s mass. The reinforced-concrete structure and glazed ground floor opening the building towards the street complete its modern character. The whole composition resembles a ship moored alongside an urban street.
The interior is notable for preserved details demonstrating that, for modernist architects, functionality was accompanied by attention to the quality and aesthetics of everyday space. The entrance is highlighted by small ceramic tiles whose distinctive shape resembles a corset (gorset in Polish), hence their colloquial Polish name gorseciki. Particularly noteworthy is the staircase with an open central part between the flights, which gives the stairwell a sense of lightness and improves daylighting.
Another distinctive feature of Bankowiec is the Mini Museum Bankowiec in the basement, created by residents. Its curator and driving force is Maria Piradoff-Link. Visits are possible by prior appointment (fb/minimuzeum.bankowiec). The nearby Café Cyganeria is also worth visiting; its interior refers to the art deco tradition.
At the intersection of 10 Lutego and Władysława IV Streets stands the Post and Telegraph Office (10 10 Lutego Street), designed by Julian Puterman-Sadłowski in cooperation with Antoni Miszewski and erected in 1928-1929. It is the earliest representative public building in central Gdynia constructed in the modernist style. From the moment of its completion, it stood out through its modernity and representative character, with a light facade and extensive glazing in rhythmic rows of large rectangular windows. The post office soon became too small for rapidly developing Gdynia, so in 1938 two additional storeys were added to a design by engineer Antoni Miszewski. This altered the original silhouette by raising the lower section to the level of the corner wall.
The former National Development Bank (BGK) building (8 10 Lutego Street), now occupied by Bank Pekao S.A., is the next object on the same side of the street. It was designed by Konstanty Jakimowicz and built and expanded in 1928-1929 and 1937-1939. The building represents moderate modernism. Its characteristic projecting facade sections, or avant-corps, attract attention. Their form refers to classical architectural solutions and gives the bank a more representative character.
At the intersection of 10 Lutego and Abrahama Streets stands the luxurious corner apartment house of Bolesław and Genowefa Orłowski (5 10 Lutego Street), built in 1935 to a design by Zbigniew Karpiński and Stanisław Ziołowski. Its light facade is enlivened by contrasting brown cornices and varied textures. The building has four storeys on the Abrahama Street side and one additional storey on 10 Lutego Street. The interior (accessible only to residents) contains a representative staircase with a fan-shaped arrangement and mosaic floors made of small, multicoloured terracotta tiles.
At 25 Abrahama Street stands a modest, low apartment house whose architecture resembles nineteenth-century houses more than modernist buildings. It was built in 1927-1928 by Augustyn Krauze, the first mayor of Gdynia. In one of the former ground-floor apartments, Mirosław Studniak established the so-called Mayor’s House, an atmospheric gallery hosting exhibitions and cultural events, most often connected with the history of the city.
By contrast, at 28 Abrahama Street stands one of Gdynia’s most modern and elegantly furnished modernist apartment houses. It was built in 1935-1936 to a design by Edward Fuhrschmied for wealthy merchants Izrael Reich and Wolf Birnbaum. The architect combined late functionalist features with a luxurious architectural approach. Each floor contained three apartments, one of which was occupied by the architect himself. The building was equipped with numerous amenities and modern solutions. Terrazzo was used extensively in the representative entrance hall and stairwell, for floors, stairs, wall panelling, balustrades and windowsills, in an elegant composition of white, grey and black material arranged in geometric patterns.
Świętojańska Street, together with Kaszubski Square and Portowa Street, forms the second major urban axis of central Gdynia, alongside the axis linking the city with the sea through 10 Lutego Street, Kościuszki Square and the South Pier. This principal commercial axis follows an almost straight north-south line connecting the port with the city centre. It has a considerably older history than modernist Gdynia and preserves the trace of the former rural road linking Gdynia with Oksywie. As the city developed, it became the principal commercial street around which the modern city centre began to emerge.
At the intersection of Świętojańska and Armii Krajowej Streets stands the PAGED Company apartment house (44 Świętojańska Street), designed by Jan Bochniak in 1934. It was one of the first office-and-residential buildings in Gdynia, commissioned by the Polish Timber Export Agency. After the Second World War the building was taken over by the Bureau for Forest Management and Land Surveying, which still occupies a substantial part of it.
The apartment house was designed on an L-shaped plan. Its architecture is distinguished by simplicity, monumentality and rhythm. Particular attention is drawn to the set back corner, raised by one storey and crowned with a terrace. Here Jan Bochniak used one of the earliest solutions in Gdynia in which the vertical division of the façade was emphasised by contrasting pilaster strips. These were combined with horizontal rows of windows to create a distinctive facade rhythm. Stone cladding, cornices and terraces are also noteworthy.
Opposite, at 42 Świętojańska Street, stands the Franciszka Glasenapp apartment house, designed by Tadeusz Jędrzejewski and erected in 1936-1938. It represents moderate modernism, combining simplicity of form with interesting spatial solutions. Particularly noteworthy is its asymmetrically shaped corner with rounded balconies supported by slender columns. The top storey is set back from the facade line, giving the building lightness and emphasising its geometric composition.
The ground floor was also carefully designed. Behind large shop windows the column structure of the building was exposed, illustrating one of the characteristic principles of modernist architecture: the separation of the structural system from the facade.
At 30 Świętojańska Street is the Gdynia Modernism InfoBox, where visitors can see a large-scale model of Gdynia city centre measuring 8 by 4 metres. The model is impressive not only in scale but also in the accuracy with which individual details are reproduced. The area of the Modernist City Centre is highlighted on the model; it has been a Monument of History since 2015 and a World Heritage site since July 2026. Almost 140 buildings were erected along Świętojańska Street, while another 310 are located along other streets forming the historic city centre. Large screens complement the model and take visitors on a film journey through the modernist routes of Gdynia. An exhibition presenting outstanding examples of Gdynia modernism can also be seen here. Each building presented is unique and offers a foretaste of what can be discovered along the trail itself.
The Grand District – city’s most symbolic area, designed to mark Gdynia’s grand opening onto the sea – comprises South Pier and the Sailing Basin. It is here that the city’s main axis, running from 10 Lutego Street, extends out into the Baltic Sea via a 630-metre-long artificial pier.
The dense urban fabric of the square gradually gives way to the more open space of Jana Pawła II Avenue, opening a broad panorama towards the sea, port and marina. Historic museum ships, Dar Pomorza and ORP Błyskawica, are moored along the avenue, their masts forming a distinctive element of the waterfront landscape. At the southern end of the pier, the Maritime Forum was planned as a representative square surrounded by important buildings, including a town hall and basilica. This ambitious project was never completed: its implementation was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War and was not resumed after 1945.
At 16 Kościuszki Square stands an apartment house that is one of the most impressive examples of Gdynia modernism. It was built in 1937-1938 for Adam Jurkowski, an eminent pharmacist and professor at Poznań University. The design was prepared by Zbigniew Kupiec and Tadeusz Kossak, architects associated with some of Gdynia’s most important modernist projects.
The light, simple facade of the Jurkowski apartment house is decorated with yellow ceramic tiles and characteristic ribbon windows extending across the full width of the building. They were set in contrasting dark frames between slender piers finished in black terrazzo. Ribbon windows became possible because the facade was separated from the structural frame – the so-called free façade. The rounded glazing at the entrance and circular ground-floor pillars are also noteworthy. The apartments were exceptionally spacious and luxurious: each occupied an entire floor and contained five rooms, a study and a waiting room for clients. The building was also equipped with a lift and central heating.
The next building is the Zygmunt Peszkowski apartment house at 14 Kościuszki Square, erected in 1927-1928 to a design by Włodzimierz Prochaska and Stanisław Odyniec-Dobrowolski. It is characterised by a corner section raised by one storey and emphasised by a rhythm of balconies. A simple volume, flat roof, large windows and contrasting colours replaced traditional ornament. This was an early example of a new approach to shaping corners that was subsequently repeated frequently in central Gdynia.
Each floor contained two spacious apartments: one with six rooms and one with four. They were designed according to modern principles of residential comfort. The living room could be connected with the dining room by means of folding doors, creating a larger open space. Large bathrooms and toilets were illuminated by rooflights – a solution rarely encountered in Gdynia at the time.
The Peszkowski apartment house was one of the first tall modernist buildings on Kościuszki Square and an important step in the transformation of Gdynia into a modern city.
Another building is the Stanisław Pręczkowski apartment house at 10/12 Kościuszki Square, designed by architect-engineer Tadeusz Jędrzejewski. It was built in stages between 1930 and 1937 and is among the most interesting examples of Gdynia modernism.
It has a characteristic rounded corner whose form resembles a ship’s bridge – one of the earliest clear examples of a reference to Gdynia’s maritime character in architecture. Streamlined forms are combined with simple geometric volumes, rhythmic windows and balconies and a flat roof.
The interiors were likewise designed according to modern functionalist principles. Apartments had folding doors allowing rooms to be combined, clearly separated sanitary areas and spaces for built-in wardrobes. Traditional stoves were also replaced by central heating.
At the South Pier moors ORP Błyskawica, the last surviving destroyer from the Second World War. Since 1976 it has served as a museum ship and forms part of the Naval Museum. Beside it there is the three-masted frigate Dar Pomorza, purchased in 1929 as a training vessel for future seafarers and now operating as a museum ship.
At the end of the South Pier, on the right, stands the former Polish Sailor’s House, now the Navigation Faculty of the Gdynia Maritime University (3 Jana Pawła II Avenue), designed by Bohdan Damięcki and Tadeusz Sieczkowski. Together with the hotel and sailing facilities – the marina, quays, hangars and workshop buildings – it was intended to serve as a centre of Polish sailing. The outbreak of the Second World War prevented these plans from being fully realised.
The three-part building was constructed in 1938-1939 and 1947-1948. Its characteristic composition combines simple geometric forms on the South Pier side. The most striking element is the central vertical section with long ribbon windows visible from the marina. Its top resembles a ship’s bridge, clearly referring to Gdynia’s maritime character. Glazed surfaces, rounded corners and horizontal lines give the building a sense of lightness and dynamism. It is one of the most characteristic examples of maritime modernism in Gdynia.
Next to it stands the former Marine Station, converted in 1971 into the Gdynia Aquarium and Oceanographic Museum, designed by Lech Zaleski. It is one of the most frequently visited educational institutions in Poland, presenting the world of plants and animals associated with water. The building developed from a pre-war concept for a complex devoted to the sea. The Marine Station was completed here in 1938 and after the war was expanded to include a museum and aquarium.
Behind the Maritime University is the General Mariusz Zaruski Sailing Basin, a water basin measuring 260 by 130 metres and designed as the third major component of the Grand District. From its quays visitors can observe everyday life in the marina and the panorama of Kamienna Góra.
At the southern end of the pier, the Maritime Forum was also planned as a representative square surrounded by important buildings, including a town hall and basilica. This ambitious project was never realised. The outbreak of the Second World War interrupted the plans, and they were not resumed after the war.
The city centre beach adjoins the marina. It lies outside the World Heritage property but within its buffer zone which is the area surrounding the Modernist City Centre that contributes to its protection against potential changes in the surrounding area.