Centrum Haffnera Dom Zdrojowy, Sopot

Centrum Haffnera Dom Zdrojowy is the spa house opposite Sopot’s pier, and it forms a shared complex with the adjoining Sheraton hotel. The present building welcomed visitors on the first of July, two thousand nine, with space for restaurants, bars, a shopping passage, a spa, and conference facilities. Its polished public face carries a long, interrupted story.

Sopot’s original spa house opened in eighteen twenty-four as a modest single-storey structure; later it grew to include guest rooms and a ballroom. A successor rose here during the late nineteenth century. Then, after an earlier building was removed in nineteen oh nine, architect Carl Weber designed another spa house, inaugurated on the sixteenth of June, nineteen ten, with ballrooms, restaurants, a casino, and a hotel.

War brought a brutal break: after the Red Army took Sopot in nineteen forty-five, the building was looted and set ablaze, and it was never rebuilt. Work on this incarnation began in two thousand six. The massing and formal façade deliberately recall that vanished predecessor, linking today’s busy resort life with Sopot’s older spa tradition.