Town Hall Square in Kołobrzeg

Town Hall Square in Kołobrzeg is a rectangular square in the Old Town, the former market square of the town. It was laid out in 1255, in connection with the founding charter of Kołobrzeg. In its centre stands the town hall. Five streets lead to the square, including Ratuszowa, Giełdowa and Gabriela Narutowicza.

The town hall and buildings up to 1945

The Gothic town hall was built in the middle of the market square in 1364. It was destroyed by shelling during the French siege of the town, and in 1826 it was demolished. Two years later a new building in the neo-Gothic style was built on the site. All sides of the square were lined with several-storey townhouses, and in 1914 the Rostock merchant Gustaw Zeeck built a department store in one of the corners.

After the war and after 1989

The buildings of the square, apart from the town hall, suffered heavily in the fighting for Kołobrzeg in 1945. After the war the ruins were cleared, leaving the undamaged town hall and several townhouses, rebuilt in altered form. On the site of Zeeck's department store a building for a branch of the Warsaw Elwa factory was erected in 1967, and several-storey blocks of flats were built at right angles to the former frontage.

At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s construction began beside the square of the cooperative Nowa Starówka estate, with townhouses styled on the old ones, which hid the blocks of flats. The north-western frontage was not rebuilt, and there is the Partner Cities Square (skwer Miast Partnerskich) there. In 2005 the postmodernist Hosso Gallery was opened in the modernised building of the former Elwa.

Practical information

• Location: Old Town, Kołobrzeg.
• Right next to it is the Kołobrzeg Museum Patria Colbergiensis, and 200 m further on the co-cathedral basilica.