Świętojańska Street

Gdynia's main commercial street — the spine of the 1920s-30s modernist city

Świętojańska is the long pedestrian-friendly commercial street that runs inland from the Southern Pier into the heart of Gdynia. It is the spine of the original 1920s plan: trams in the middle (now gone, but the alignment remains), apartment buildings on either side, ground-floor shops, café terraces in summer.

The five blocks closest to the sea are the best — modernist apartment blocks with horizontal windows, balconies, and rounded corners, well preserved despite the bombing of 1939 and the post-war neglect. Bankowiec (no. 7) and the PLO Building (no. 28) are the standouts. The Gdynia City Museum publishes a free modernist architecture walking-tour leaflet — pick it up there or at the tourist information at the station.

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A story
The whole of central Gdynia was laid out between 1920 and 1939 on what had been a fishing village of 1,300 people. The polish state was poor, but architects like Stanisław Ziołowski and Marian Lalewicz built apartment buildings here in a stripped-down Bauhaus-influenced style that has no equivalent in any other Polish city — Gdynia is on the UNESCO tentative list for this reason.