Gdansk had a strong connection to Elizabethan theatre: English acting troupes toured here from the 1580s onwards, and the city had one of the earliest purpose-built Shakespeare theatres outside England. The current building, opened in 2014, was designed by Renato Rizzi as a striking contemporary reinterpretation of the Elizabethan model — it has a retractable roof to allow open-air performances, a raked yard with standing groundling space, and a stage that can be configured in multiple ways.
The theatre hosts an annual Shakespeare Festival each summer, drawing productions from across Europe and beyond. Even if you can't catch a performance, the building itself — black steel and glass in a brutalist-Renaissance hybrid — is one of the more interesting pieces of new architecture in the old town.