Centrum Historii Zajezdnia, Wrocław

Centrum Historii Zajezdnia is a museum in the former tram-depot building on Grabiszyńska Street. It opened in twenty sixteen and is run by the Memory and Future Centre. Take in the long brick frontage: the depot dates from the late nineteenth century, was built in red brick in the industrial manner of its day, and survived the war and the siege of Wrocław despite damage.

This place carries a defining chapter of the city’s Solidarity movement. On the twenty-sixth of August nineteen eighty, the region’s earliest inter-factory strike committee formed here, beginning an occupation strike that lasted until the first of September. During that action, Father Stanisław Orzechowski celebrated Mass for the strikers and a crowd of twenty thousand Wrocław residents gathered beyond the gate.

After the war, the complex became a municipal bus depot, known as depot number seven. Its museum exhibition now follows Wrocław’s transformation from nineteen forty-five into the present, using recreated streetscapes, a historic kiosk, a freight wagon, documents, photographs, sound, and interactive displays. The story reaches beyond this hall, embracing Lower Silesia, the postwar city, Solidarity, and the territories incorporated into Poland after the war.