Sofitel Grand Sopot, Sopot

Here is Sofitel Grand Sopot, a historic resort hotel facing Gdańsk Bay. Let the sweeping facade set the scene before its past takes over. The hotel opened as the Kasino-Hotel in June nineteen twenty-seven, built chiefly for guests of the nearby gambling club.

Otto Kloeppel designed it with engineer Richard Kohnke, and the project cost twenty million Danzig guilders. In that era, this was Zoppot, within the Free City of Danzig. During the German occupation, Adolf Hitler used the hotel as his headquarters for a week in September nineteen thirty-nine.

After the war, the building became the Grand Hotel Sopot. It later welcomed a major Pugwash meeting on disarmament and world security in Europe. In December nineteen eighty-one, communist security officers arrested Solidarity opposition figures here.

Accor took over its management and reopened the renovated hotel under the Sofitel name in December two thousand six. Today, it remains a five-star hotel on the bay, carrying an extraordinary share of Sopot’s history behind its elegant frontage.