Wrocławska Fontanna, Wrocław

Wrocławska Fontanna is a multimedia fountain, Poland’s largest and among the largest in Europe. Its broad basin is wrapped by the pergola beside Centennial Hall, giving the water a stage-like enclosure. This pool was created for the Centennial Exhibition by Max Berg and Hans Poelzig in February nineteen thirteen, long before the present fountain arrived.

The fountain opened on the ninth of June two thousand nine, marking the twentieth anniversary of Poland’s June elections. The still surface can become an apparatus for performance. It has one hundred eighty-two moving jets, eighty-eight that foam the water, and three fire jets, with three hundred twenty-eight submerged lamps.

A geyser at the pool’s heart can throw water forty metres high, only two metres below Centennial Hall’s height. Computer control turns the jets into shifting walls and patterns, joined to music and illumination. In winter, the drained basin can also become an ice rink, so this vast pool changes character with the season.