Sofitel Grand Sopot

Gamblers built the Grand Hotel in Sopot. In the 1920s the spa town of Zoppot belonged to the Free City of Danzig, a league-of-nations statelet whose casino was one of the few places in that part of Europe where roulette was legal, and the money it drew paid for a hotel on the beach to house the players. The Kasino-Hotel opened in 1927 to designs by Otto Kloeppel, with the pier at its side and the Baltic at the foot of its lawn. It became the Grand Hotel after 1945 and has been Sofitel Grand Sopot since a renovation completed in 2006.

History

The casino years were short. Germany annexed Danzig in September 1939 and Hitler used the hotel as his quarters for several days during the invasion of Poland, directing the siege of Westerplatte from Sopot. After the war the hotel passed to the Polish state and the Orbis company, and as the Grand it was the showpiece of the coast under the People's Republic. Its visitors' book from those decades is the reason the hotel is famous in Poland: Charles de Gaulle on his state visit of 1967, Fidel Castro in 1972, Marlene Dietrich on her 1960s Polish tour, the Shah of Iran, and the singers and actors of the Sopot song festival held in the Forest Opera up the hill.

Orbis was taken over by Accor, and after a two-year renovation the hotel reopened in 2006 under the Sofitel name. The casino returned to the ground floor. On 1 September 2009 Vladimir Putin and Donald Tusk, then Poland's prime minister, breakfasted at the hotel before the ceremony at Westerplatte marking seventy years since the war began.

Architecture and design

Kloeppel's building is a long, symmetrical block in the neo-baroque manner of the 1920s, cream rendered, with a mansard roof, a central pavilion and a terrace that runs the length of the beach front. It is listed as a monument. The renovation of 2004 to 2006 restored the ballroom, the staircase and the Art Deco detail of the public rooms, and redecorated the bedrooms in a French-Polish manner of silk, dark wood and pale blue. The lawn between the terrace and the sand was kept, which is why the hotel still reads from the pier as it did in 1927.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has 127 rooms and suites. Sea-facing rooms look across the lawn and beach to the Bay of Gdańsk and the pier; rooms on the park side face the trees of the spa gardens. The suites carry the names of guests who stayed in them, and the one once used by Marlene Dietrich and the one used by de Gaulle are the two most requested.

Dining

The hotel's restaurant serves Polish and French dishes in a room that opens onto the terrace in summer, and the bar occupies the ground floor beside the casino. Breakfast on the terrace with the pier in view is the meal to plan a morning around.

Wellness

The spa has an indoor pool, a sauna, a steam room and treatment rooms, and the beach is a few steps beyond the lawn. Sopot has been a sea-bathing resort since the 1820s and the hotel's position gives it the sand directly.

Weddings and events

The ballroom, restored in 2006 with its chandeliers and parquet, is the main wedding and gala room and faces the sea. A set of conference rooms serves meetings for companies from the Tricity, and the terrace and lawn take summer receptions. The pier beside the hotel, 511 metres long, is the usual setting for photographs.

Location

The hotel stands at the seaward end of Monte Cassino street, Sopot's pedestrian spine, beside the pier and the spa park. Sopot station on the SKM line reaches Gdańsk's old town in about twenty minutes, and Gdańsk Lech Wałęsa airport is about twenty minutes by car. For a luxury hotel in Sopot, or anywhere on the Polish coast, the Grand is the one with the history.