Audioguides Gdynia

Gdynia is one of Europe's youngest cities by deliberate design. After Poland regained independence in 1918 and found itself with access to the Baltic Sea but no major working port, the government decided to build one from scratch on what was then a fishing village of around 1,000 people. Within a decade, Gdynia had a population of 120,000 and a modern harbor. The architects given the job designed a city in the Modernist idiom of the 1920s and 1930s, drawing on the same sources as Erich Mendelssohn and the Bauhaus school, and the result was so coherent that the Modernist Center of Gdynia was designated a historical monument of Poland in 2015.

Walking the streets of central Gdynia today, the interwar modernism is remarkably intact.

The tenement buildings along Swietojanska Street, the shipping company offices near the harbor, and the Sea Towers that now mark the skyline all participate in an architectural conversation across eight decades. In 2021 Gdynia joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network as a City of Film, recognition of the Gdynia Film Festival which has been the most important Polish film competition since 1974.