Manors, Castles & Glass Sculptures: Polish Railway Stations
Can a railway station serve as a travel destination in its own right? Railway stations are highly significant yet frequently overlooked points on the map of vacation journeys. We encourage you to pay some increased attention to them since they present us with a great abundance of architectural forms.
The first train on Polish land departed from Wrocław to Oława on 22 May 1842. What proved to have great significance for the development of the railway was the launch, three years later, of the first section of the Warsaw–Vienna Railway encompassing the route from Warsaw to Grodzisk Mazowiecki. In the second half of the 19th century, new railway lines proliferated quickly, thanks to which the Second Polish Republic, after the partitions, was criss-crossed by almost 16,000 kilometres of train tracks (now there are a little over 20,000 kilometres). With the development of the railway, railway stations started to appear in cities and towns on Polish land as early as in the mid-19thcentury. After Poland regained its independence, the construction of new station buildings became a key element of the integration and modernisation of the country, especially since the railway, which in the 19th century was oriented chiefly towards freight transport (mostly of coal), started to develop intensively as a means of passenger transport. Hence, significant attention was paid to the architectural forms of the stations.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Łódź Fabryczna railway station, photo: Wojciech Kryński / Forum
Today, the PKP (Polskie Koleje Państwowe [Polish State Railways]) company manages over 2,500 train stations, 600 of which handle passenger traffic. According to the Office of Rail Transport report published in 2018, the busiest railway stations in Poland were Wrocław Główny (Wrocław Main railway station), handling 401 trains and 58,000 passengers per day, and Poznań Główny (Poznań Main railway station), with a similar number of passengers and 377 trains daily. In third place was Warsaw Śródmieście (Downtown), which in 2018 served 17.5 million passengers. According to the report, ‘over 26% boarding and alighting passengers (158 million) made use of the 10 largest stations in terms of passenger traffic’, and the capital’s stations alone – Warsaw Śródmieście, Warsaw Wschodnia (East), Warsaw Centralna (Central), Warsaw Zachodnia (West) and Warsaw Wileńska (Vilnius) – ‘served a total of 73 million travellers, which amounts to 46% of passengers across Poland’s 10 largest stations’.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Wrocław Główny railway station, photo: P. Dziurman / Reporter / East News
We usually assess railway stations in terms of their usability – they’re supposed to be clean and safe and provide travellers with indispensable services, such as ticket offices, waiting rooms, cafeterias and restrooms. For many years, train stations in Polish cities didn’t ensure the expected level of comfort. They were neglected, their interiors tended to be deserted or rented for purposes other than that of serving passengers; some of them were quite dreadful to use! Thankfully, a dozen or so years ago, the situation began to change, and some railway buildings started to undergo renovation. What constituted a big impulse for the change was the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship which took place in Poland and Ukraine: the potential embarrassment in front of foreign football fans ‘helped’ find the funds for further renovations. Since then, dozens of stations have recovered their original charm and modern functionality, and some currently await improvement in terms of appearance (the Railway Stations Investment Programme [Program Inwestycji Dworcowych] estimates that a total of around 200 stations will have been either modernised or built from scratch by 2023). It is important that some of the railway stations formerly managed by the PKP were put under the administration of local authorities, and the latter have also undertaken to invest in the buildings.
Both under the partitions and in the interwar years, as well as post-1945, the expansion of the railway was a significant part of the country’s modernisation programme. It’s to this phenomenon that we owe dozens of stations, many of which are now not only valuable historical sites but also showcases of curious, often highly original architecture. Now that a large number of Polish stations have regained their splendour, they constitute sightseeing destinations in their own right, worth putting on one’s travel itinerary. They have the power to both enrapture and surprise.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Gdynia Główna railway station, interior, photo: Adam Warżawa / PAP
The numerous railway station renovations that have taken place in recent years encompassed important and valuable buildings in Poland’s largest cities. The spectacular restoration of the Wrocław Główny railway station was widely described in the media, and the renovation of the Warsaw Centralna railway station helped improve the opinion of Poles on the architecture of post-war modernism. The renovation revealed anew the grand architecture and the curious ornamentation of the Gdynia Główna station’s interior, and the removal of the layers of dirt from the station buildings in Opole and Bielsko-Biała made them not only fit for passenger transfers but also key objects on the cities’ maps.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Railway station, Wodzisław Śląski, photo: Kamil Czainski / Wikimedia.org
Yet it’s the stations in smaller towns that are undergoing truly grand metamorphoses and consequently turning into real railway gems. As recently as 2017, the railway station in Wodzisław Śląski still resembled a grey, gloomy building of unclear purpose – from its bland structure, it was difficult to make out any traces of the architecture of the 1880s. Thanks to European Union funds and in cooperation with a heritage conservationist, the original look of the building was successfully recovered, and the brick facades were complemented with a wall of greenery and a glazed extension of the upper level. While the entirety of the station’s ground floor has been adapted for the needs of passengers, the first floor is now home to Centrum Aktywności Lokalnej (Local Activity Centre), with its workshops and training rooms. A similar result was attained in the Goczałkowice Zdrój station. Here, more work was required since the building had burnt down in 2002. Placed under local administration in 2013, it underwent a major renovation. Currently, the station building houses not only passenger service facilities but also the Stary Dworzec Centrum Obsługi Ruchu Turystycznego (Old Railway Station Tourism Service Centre). In 2020, the new Goczałkowice Zdrój building won the ‘Dworzec Roku’ (Railway Station of the Year) contest organised by the Pro Kolej Foundation and the PKP Group Foundation. Two years prior, in the first year of the competition, the award went to the Wągrowiec station, whose charming 19th-century building had regained its beauty, and passengers had been provided with a new, modern pavilion containing, among other things, a bistro bar.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Railway station, Przemyśl, photo: PKP press materials / https://www.pkp.pl
There are buildings among Polish railway stations whose forms go far beyond serving only as a ‘package’ for their transportation functions. The quality of their architecture and the elaborateness of their design are similar to those of other valuable heritage sites of their time. These include, for instance, the railway station in Przemyśl, put into operation in 1860 and rebuilt in the late 19th century in a neo-Baroque style. The building, created in the image of an ornamental palace, serves as a glamorous frontage of a town square, with the central part crowned by a parapet connected to the side wings through gallery skywalks. Equally showy is the station’s interior, preserved along with paintings and details – doors, railings, mouldings, panelling and flooring. One of the station’s wings is home to a restaurant, one that’s not only very highly rated by foodies but equally frequently attracts guests with its grand, stylish décor. Richly laid tables also await guests of the now closed Białowieża Towarowa station – here, the station building has been turned into the chic space of Carska (Tsar’s) Restaurant.
Another stylish, eclectic structure is that of the main railway station in Lublin, Witold Lanci’s work from the 1870s. Although rebuilt multiple times, it has retained a range of interesting elements to this day, such as the tall, ornamental parapets and the squat ‘towers’ flanking the entrance. The structure of today’s station in Nowy Sącz dates back to 1909 (while the building itself was constructed 40 years prior). The mouldings adorning the façade represent the Art Nouveau style, typical back then for public facilities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Similar elements of style are to be found in the structure of the railway station in Tarnów, erected between 1906 and 1910 according to a design by the Viennese architect Ernst Baudisch, an expert on railway station design. In the autumn of 2020, the original neo-Baroque structure and extraordinarily stylish interiors were restored to the train station in Białystok; the building was constructed in 1861 as a significant point on the Warsaw–Petersburg rail line. Its richly ornamented, horizontal structure has been endowed with a form that matches the station’s significance.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Łódź Fabryczna railway station, photo: Marcin Czechowicz / PAP
Although the railway is an invention of the industrial revolution and dates back two hundred years, it’s still changing, developing and modernising. The results of this include brand new stations, built in contemporary times and according to current design styles. The best-known and largest of them is the Łódź Fabryczna railway station – an enormous building made of steel, glass and concrete, erected as one of the pillars of a large urban project called the New Centre (Nowe Centrum) of Łódź. Put into operation in December 2016, it’s virtually empty: it serves a little over 9,000 people per day (twice as many as Radom, half as many as Sopot), and the eye-catching, highly modern building still contains no trading points, cafeterias, or kiosks five years after its opening. Perhaps the station will gain more appeal once it ceases to be a ‘blind’ one – the track extensions are still under construction, and they are yet to be fully integrated into the country’s larger network of rail lines.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Poznań Główny railway station, photo: Adam Ciereszko / PAP
The railway station in the capital of Greater Poland, Poznań, had no luck either: here, the old, simple, modernist station building was closed and replaced in 2012 with a new, spherical-shaped structure containing a shopping mall (and, according to local residents, resembling a bread bin). The combination of the commercial function with that of the station hasn’t worked particularly well: confused travellers wander around the building dominated by stores, looking for ticket offices and entrances to platforms; for years, there were no elevators and no clear information system. Sadly, a similar fate awaits passengers at other stations combined with shopping malls, including such busy transportation hubs as Kraków Główny or Katowice.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Railway station, Nowe Skalmierzyce, photo: Koroniec / Wikimedia.org
Like a cathedral – that’s how some describe the building of one of Poland’s most unusual stations, that in Nowe Skalmierzyce in Greater Poland Voivodeship. The building, constructed at the turn of the 19th and early 20th centuries in a neo-Gothic style, impresses both with its scale and with its expansive structure. Like a brick castle, the station dominates the area and stretches far along the railway tracks. The building’s form had its justification: it was at this station that tracks from the Prussian and the Russian partitions connected. The purpose was not just to emphasise this fact through the scale of the building; the decision was also motivated by functionality. In each of the partitions, trains would run along tracks of a different rail gauge. In the 1990s, the impressive station in Nowe Skalmierzyce lost its relevance and started to fall into ruin. Although the maintenance of such a large, historic building is costly, local authorities took over the building from the PKP in 2015 and are now planning, in addition to retaining the function of the station, to put the grand structure into use as a headquarters of NGOs, a cultural centre with a theatre hall, and even the Registry Office. Once well maintained and actively used, the building stands a chance of becoming the region’s landmark and pride.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Railway station, Malbork, photo: PKP press materials / https://www.pkp.pl
Castle-like architecture and neo-Gothic forms can be seen at numerous railway stations. Getting off a train at Malbork, a traveller immediately recognises that they have arrived in a town that’s home to real treasures of medieval military architecture; similar impressions await those arriving at Toruń, Opole, Iława, Świebodzice and Kamień Ząbkowicki – here, too, railway stations have been preserved and endowed with neo-medieval forms. An unusually eye-catching ‘castle’, maintained in austere Dutch neo-Renaissance style, is the Gdańsk Główny station (currently under renovation). Built in the final years of the 19th century according to a design by Aleksander Rüdell and Paul Thoemer, it attracts attention with its scale, especially its tall clock tower, but also with its details: the brick walls of the building are complemented with ornaments made of light-coloured stone.
Skierniewice, one of the key stations of the Warsaw–Vienna Railway, also boasts a neo-Gothic building. It was designed in 1874 by Jan Heurich, Senior, who derived inspiration from English Gothic architectural forms. Aside from the recently renovated structure, the station also offers consolation to those tormented by unrequited love. On one of the platforms, there’s a sculpture of Stanisław Wokulski (it is here that the protagonist of The Doll [Lalka] was supposed to have attempted suicide under the wheels of a train, saved, however, by an old railwayman). The broken-hearted can slip letters into the pocket of his frock coat, counting on the unhappily infatuated trader’s sympathy.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Railway station, Żyrardów, photo: Marek Bazak / East News
When Poland regained its independence in 1918, architecture constituted one of the tools through which people attempted to integrate anew the country that had been partitioned for 124 years and to recover unity and identity. Hence the search for a ‘national style’ and the public investments that followed this style. What was then considered close to Polish history, identity and spirit was, among others, the manor style, which proved particularly suitable for station buildings. In the 1920s, the railway network was being completed, which is also why numerous stations were built at the time, especially in small towns and villages. The manor style was adapted for this purpose with particular enthusiasm since it would evoke positive, homely connotations and therefore correspond perfectly to the national agenda of making rail transportation available to local communities. Some of the most beautiful and picturesque manors-stations were designed by Romuald Miller. It was he who designed the station buildings in Żyrardów, Radziwiłłów, Aleksandrów Kujawski and Grodzisk Mazowiecki in the 1920s; what’s more, the same architect came up with a typical design for a small- or medium-sized town railway station – and these as a rule easy-to-build and maintain, replicated buildings represented the manor style. They emerged, for instance, in Sierpiec, Gostynin, Łęczyca, Ozorków, Koło and Konin (this last no longer exists).
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Rabka-Zdrój railway station, photo: PKP press materials / https://www.pkp.pl
While the manor style was especially keenly employed in railway buildings across Mazovia after 1918, in the southern corners of Polish lands, buildings were raised according to a style that alluded to the mountain landscape. Getting off a train in Rabka Zdrój or Szklarska Poręba, a passenger immediately feels the atmosphere of a mountain resort. Few instances of such mountain spa–like architecture have been preserved, since most of these buildings emerged in the late 19th century and were therefore made of wood, which, when neglected, erodes more quickly than brick walls. However, some stations, such as the ones in Duszniki Zdrój and Piwniczna, have retained their original quaintness.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Railway station, Będzin, 2008, photo: Michał Szalast / East News
It is interesting that the modernist style, so fashionable in the 1920 and 1930s and a source of excitement for most architects, didn’t gain particular traction as far as railway stations were concerned. One example is the station in Będzin, designed by Edgar Norwerth, the same one who authored the design of the Centralny Instytut Wychowania Fizycznego (Central Institute of Physical Education) in Warsaw (today’s Akademia Wychowania Fizycznego [University of Physical Education]). In 1927, the architect fashioned the Będzin station using cuboids: a horizontal one with windows forming horizontal lines and a vertical one in the form of a slender tower with a clock. The impersonal, orderly structure of the station lived to see a renovation as early as in 2008, thanks to which this highly valuable building was discovered anew. It is very likely that Norwerth was also behind the design of another modernist station – the one in Piaseczno near Warsaw (no archives on the subject have been preserved, so the hypothesis can’t be confirmed). This building, too, constitutes a composition of simple structures, whose order is further emphasised by white facades raised on a plinth made of dark clinker brick. The building’s wing bulges in an eye-catching way towards the platforms, inviting associations with Streamline Moderne. The Piaseczno station, too, had stood forgotten and neglected for years; it was only the recent renovation that recovered its pre-war charm.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Railway station, Karpacz, 2012, photo: Irena Goderska / Wikimedia.org
An increasingly popular trend in Polish railway stations is that of introducing additional functions into their interiors that would be attractive for the local community. Station buildings become home to local activity centres and cultural facilities; libraries are especially popular – one can order or read a book or a magazine in, for instance, Rumia (a design that was showered with awards in its day), Ruda Śląska, Chebza, Sopot, Legionowo and Będzin. Both a library and a cinema operate at the Wrocław Główny railway station, while the small station in Falenica near Warsaw has for years housed a centre for local cultural life of a kind, including a café-club, a cinema and a bookstore. At the railway station in Karpacz, one can visit the Museum of Toys, whereas the one in Tarnów serves as the location of one of Poland’s more acclaimed art galleries. The stations that cease to be useful change not only their function but also their owners. They frequently come into the hands of municipalities, which turn them into, for example, residential buildings. An old, inoperative railway station can also be… bought. From time to time, small, deserted stations are put up for sale. Then it’s only up to the new owners what kind of new life they will be given.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Interior of library at railway station, Rumia, designed by Sikora Wnętrza, photo: courtesy of Sikora Wnętrza / www.sikorawnetrza.pl
Following years of crisis, rail travel is becoming popular again. In 2000, 360 million trips were taken; the rate started to decrease in subsequent years – in 2005 it was only 257 million; in 2015, 280 million; but then, in 2019, it once again rose to almost 336 million. Recovering the functionality but also the beauty of Polish railway stations certainly contributes to the rising popularity of train travel. The renovations have enabled us to discover anew the architectural richness of station buildings, which more and more often become tourist destinations in themselves, attractions worth visiting.
Written by Anna Cymer, 4 August 2021, updated 25 January 2024
Translated by Anna Potoczny
[{"nid":"5688","uuid":"6aa9e079-0240-4dcb-9929-0d1cf55e03a5","type":"article","langcode":"en","field_event_date":"","title":"Challenges for Polish Prose in the Nineties","field_introduction":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary\r\n","field_summary":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary","topics_data":"a:2:{i:0;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259609\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:26:\u0022#language \u0026amp; literature\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:27:\u0022\/topics\/language-literature\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}i:1;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259644\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:8:\u0022#culture\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:14:\u0022\/topic\/culture\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}}","field_cover_display":"default","image_title":"","image_alt":"","image_360_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/360_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ZsoNNVXJ","image_260_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/260_auto_cover\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=pLlgriOu","image_560_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/560_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=0n3ZgoL3","image_860_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/860_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ELffe8-z","image_1160_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/1160_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=XazO3DM5","field_video_media":"","field_media_video_file":"","field_media_video_embed":"","field_gallery_pictures":"","field_duration":"","cover_height":"991","cover_width":"1000","cover_ratio_percent":"99.1","path":"en\/node\/5688","path_node":"\/en\/node\/5688"}]