Art and a bike - it fits together! Embark on a fascinating bike tour through the Tri-City and discover its extraordinary outdoor gallery. Get ready to meet an explosion of colour, imagination and social messages that attract attention and bring grey walls to life. The Tri-City Mural Gallery is waiting for you to discover it by bike. . .
Not everyone knows yet, but the Tri-City boasts one of the largest collections of large-format painting not only in Poland. Over the past decade, artists from all over the world have expressed their artistic visions on city walls and walls, so the proposed bike tour through Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot resembles a visit to an art gallery.
Weekend attractions in the Tri-City
Zaspa – a monumental art
Gdansk Zaspa is an ordinary and unusual district. Dozens of 10-storey blocks from the 70s and 80s do not make a special impression at first glance. It is only after a deeper exploration that this place gives You a different perspective. First of all, it is green, which is not at all obvious in the case of a large housing estate from communism times. The layout of the blocks is also unusual, because they form a kind of “green courtyards”. You can clearly see it on the satellite images.
However, the biggest attraction of Zaspa is the murals. They are located in two neighbouring districts: Zaspa Mlyniec and Zaspa Rozstaje. It is divided by a fragment of the former runway, because it used to be an airport. This is evidenced by the names and patrons of streets connected with the history of Polish aviation: Startowa, Pilots, Squadron 303, Bajan, Nagorski or Skarzynski.
The first large-format paintings were created at the end of the last century, in 1997 on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of Gdansk. In 2009-2016 it hosted annual editions of the Monumental Art Festival, where painters from the farthest parts of the world came to Zaspa to leave their mark. The result of these activities is an “open art gallery”, with a total of more than 50 works, the largest of which are as high as 30 metres!
See also: Zaspa block, which became a galery
“The Last Judgment”, “Milosz on the Block” and more. . .
During the few years during which this open gallery was created, paintings with a wide variety of subjects appeared – from historical to social to abstraction. You will find here, among others, a contemporary version of
the famous Gdansk work from the XVth century “The Last Judgment” by Piotr Szwabe (Skarzynskiego Street) or “M-City” – one of the murals by the most famous Polish street-art artist Mariusz Waras. A mural of legends of Polish large-format painting by Rafał Roskowinski and Wojciech Wozniak is a special painting for the inhabitants of Gdansk. “Milosz in the block”. Its symbolism is eloquent, as it depicts a scene in which Miłosz hands Lech Walesa a pistol to continue the revolution.
TUSE painted, street portraits
Monumental painting has a long tradition in Gdansk Zaspa. However, look out for smaller formats in other neighbourhoods as well. They decorate the walls of buildings, fences, walls and even garages. Of particular interest are the works of the Tricity artist with the pseudonym Tuse. For years he has been working in the painterly underground, now he works officially and makes characteristic portraits of the inhabitants of the city and many well-known figures. His work is, for example, the famous portraits of Zbigniew Wodecki on Do Studzienki Street and Anna Przybylska at Partyzantow Street in Gdansk Wrzeszcz. The artist also made magnificent paintings on the walls of the Aioli restaurant at Partyzantow Street. Much of Tusy’s work is located in the area of the shipyard and in Siedlce district of Gdansk.
Gdynia, the city of the sea. . . and paints
Gdansk Zaspa is admittedly the largest gallery in the Tri-City, but it does not end with the theme of art in urban space. Thanks to the Traffic Design Festival, which has been running for several years, Gdynia also boasts many murals scattered throughout the city centre and its surroundings. You will find here both several-storey paintings and smaller but equally striking productions from the borderline of graffiti and street-art trends.
Visiting Gdynia’s murals can also be a kind of city game consisting in finding them. Discover individual paintings in the area of Derdowski, St. Piotr, Zeromski and Portowa Streets, or Starowiejska, Abrahama, Wojta Radtkego and Wladyslawa IV Streets. Not all locations are obvious! Take a look at the courtyards and alleys of modernist tenement houses and explore the city alternatively.
The Tri-City Murals Gallery is a lot of impressions and emotions to discover in the alleys of the city. . .
A bike tour along the route of the Gdynia murals will also allow you to get to know the modernist architecture of Gdynia. The residential construction from the interwar period with characteristic “sea” details are worth paying attention to. It’s the only place like this in Europe.
See also: Gdynia modernism –an unique on a global scale
Sopot, a spa with a style!
Street art also came to Sopot, although in quantity and scale more adequate to the character and architecture of the city, as well as to its spa climate. Worthy of note are basically three paintings. The first is a portrait of Krzysztof Klenczon, who lived and worked in Sopot in the 1960s. It is located in a building on the popular seaside promenade.
Another painting decorates the tenement house at number 24 on Haffner Street. That’s where you’ll meet a. . . sunbathing tourist. The mural by Anna Reinert, entitled “Tourist”, created in 2012, has recently been renovated, after which its heroine not only regained colour but also changed her pose. However, it is still warming in the rays of the Baltic sun.
The third painting, which is one of the artistic showcases of the resort, is dedicated to the memory of an outstanding painter, contemporary artist, lecturer at the Gdansk Academy of Fine Arts – Jozef Czerniawski. The mural is located at Heroes of Monte Cassino Street, at the intersection with Grunwaldzka Street. The painting is an enlarged copy of one of Czerniawski’s paintings.
Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia are cyclist-friendly cities. Most locations can be reached by bicycle roads or bicycle lanes and sometimes use public roads with low traffic. Visiting the Tricity Murals Gallery is an excellent proposal for an alternative form of cycling activity. Art and bicycle – it fits together!
Tricity mural gallery (map)
Also check out these other hikes or trails in this area:
- Along the shore of the Gulf of Gdansk
- Spa City Break
- Cycling to freedom – a cycling tour with history in the background. . .
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