Grand Hotel is one of the most characteristic and recognizable facilities in Sopot. Located right next to the beach, on the shore of the Bay of Gdańsk, close to the central square and the entrance to the Pier. Over its nearly hundred-year history, it has hosted many distinguished guests, and it still delights with its unique style and elegance.
The Hotel was built in the 1920’s, and was dedicated to the most prosperous visitors to the resort and the Sopot casino goers. “Kasino Hotel”, as it was called at the time, was designed by architects of the Gdańsk University of Technology and was the main project of the Sopot authorities during the interwar period.
The interior of the Sofitel Grand Sopot hotel, photo: Sofitel Grand in Sopot
Its construction did not avoid scandals. First someone noticed its similarity to some other hotel built a decade earlier in Szczawnio-Zdrój in Lower Silesia. The plagiarism accusations were withdrawn following a settlement. Moreover, after a few years it turned out that serious financial malpractices occurred during its construction in which the representatives of local authorities participated. This led to the arrest and consequently the suicide of the Sopot Chief Mayor.
The great history of "Kasino Hotel"
The unfortunate beginnings were fast forgotten with the hotel efficiently fulfilling its function. As the most elegant, exclusive and expensive hotel in Sopot, it offered services at the highest levels and welcoming guests belonging to the world’s economic and political elites, including crowned heads.
Sofitel Grand Sopot, photo: promotional materials
The “Kasino Hotel” was also a venue of great historical events. The elegant rooms and hotel halls hosted in 1939 the German commanders who organised the attack on Gdynia and Hel Peninsula. The Hel defenders signed their capitulation there after two months of holding flanks under German attack. Even before that, Adolf Hitler was a guest and made the hotel his main quarters.
The Hel Fortifications Route
The hotel played a much more tragic role at the end of World War II, when it was transformed into a military hospital, and after the Russians entered Sopot – the headquarters of the Red Army. However, its former functions were quickly restored and its name was changed to “Grand Hotel”.
Thanks to its legend and high standard, in the post-war years it was a kind of oasis of pre-war times, used by representatives of the remnants of a bygone era.
Cultural life in "Grand"
Starting from the 1960s, the “Grand” in Sopot was also a place of cultural life. “Czerwone Gitary” debuted here in 1961. Movies were shot in the hotel, radio broadcasts were recorded, and prestigious conferences were organized. Of course, it was also an accommodation base for the most important cultural event in Sopot, the annual song festival.
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Since the beginning of the 1990s, a casino has been opened in the hotel, which is now only a hotel attraction, and not, as it used to be, the reason for the construction and justification of the hotel’s operation.
On the guest list of “Grand”, in addition to the above-mentioned leader of Nazi Germany, you can also find Marlene Dietrich, Fidel Castro, Jan Kiepura, Reza Pahlavi and hundreds of other people known from the headlines of the last hundred years.
Today’s five-star “Grand Hotel” still serves as the representative and most elegant hotel in Sopot, used by the most important and wealthy guests of the entire region.
Sofitel Grand Sopot, photo: promotional materials
