Main square of Koszalin with a modernist town hall of 1962, an illuminated fountain and a reconstruction of 2014.
Rynek Staromiejski in Koszalin is the main square in the town centre, within the Śródmieście estate. Around it stand commercial and residential buildings, on the northern frontage a modernist town hall, and in the south-western corner, beyond Zwycięstwa Street, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
A fire in 1718 consumed most of the town's buildings, together with the castle, the church and the town hall. During the rebuilding the market square was enlarged, and the town hall was placed not in the middle of the square but on its southern frontage. In 1724 the people of Koszalin set up a sandstone monument to the Prussian king Frederick William I in the middle of the square, in gratitude for his financing of the reconstruction. The monument stood until February 1945, when it was dismantled before the town was taken by the Red Army. In 2008 archaeologists discovered fragments of the brick foundation of this monument beneath the paving of the square.
Until 1945 the square was simply called Markt, in the Polish People's Republic era it bore the name of the Square of the Fighters of the PPR, and after 1989 it was named Rynek Staromiejski. In 1962 the present town hall was opened, which occupies two thirds of the northern frontage. In 1965 the monument Byliśmy-Jesteśmy-Będziemy (We Were, We Are, We Shall Be) was unveiled here, and on the occasion of the National Harvest Festival in 1975 a fountain was built.
In 2014 the square was rebuilt: the surface was replaced, old trees were removed, and the monument was moved to the Koszalin amphitheatre. An illuminated fountain was placed on the eastern frontage, a pergola on the western one, and on the north-western side a glazed building intended for catering.
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