A message from Anna Golec-Mastroianni, President of the Sopot Tourist Organisation.

Hello and welcome to the new Visit Sopot blog. My team and I at the Sopot Tourist Organisation are delighted to have this opportunity to show you more of what our truly beautiful city has to offer. We have created this blog to give us the chance to highlight places and ideas which we think you will find interesting and which we hope will give you more reasons to choose Sopot as your next destination or to help you get the most out of your visit to Poland’s premier seaside resort.

Our hometown has so much to offer throughout the year and squeezes so much into its 17km2. Take a gentle stroll from the famous Sopot pier (Molo), the longest wooden pier in Europe, and less than 2km away you will find yourself in the heart of magnificent forests at the wonderful Forest Opera open-air arena, a venue which has played host to some of the biggest names in music over the years. Sopot is famous in Poland for its long, sandy beaches; its wide choice of top-notch restaurants, bars and clubs; its peaceful parks and gardens; its rich calendar of cultural events and entertainment and for its high quality spa facilities which offer world-class health and beauty treatments which attract visitors from far and wide.

Sopot is enjoying a wonderful period in its history and recent years have seen some of the world’s largest hotel brands adding to the excellent accommodation options in the city with brand new resort hotels. The increase in visitors has offered encouragement to those in the culinary sector and Sopot is blessed with numerous excellent places to enjoy cuisine from all parts of the world. Local cuisine has also benefited from the increased interest and you will find more and more places offering wonderful interpretations of traditional Polish and Kashubian cuisine.

Sopot developed first and foremost as a spa and health resort but the increase in visitors this brought saw the building of restaurants, cafes, dance ballrooms and the famous casino to keep the city’s visitors entertained. The city’s reputation as a place to have fun as well as relax developed to such a point that the first half of the 20th century saw Sopot often referred to as the ‘Monte Carlo of the north’. Its reputation attracted big names from all over Europe including members of European royalty, including the German Kaiser who maintained two properties overlooking the sea. The inter-war years saw the Casino experience its heyday and though the city escaped a lot of the damage suffered by its neighbours, the casino and spa house complex were virtually destroyed at the end of WWII.

The post-war years saw Sopot saw the city once again become a popular health resort for workers from all over Poland and develop a rich cultural calendar which attracted many of the stars of a new era in Poland. Some of the regular events in today’s cultural calendar can trace their roots to the communist period. The last twenty years have seen the calendar expanded and enriched so it now offers a wide choice of events and festivals covering all types of music; the arts; sports; food and much more. As well as the internationally renowned Sopot Festival held each August, there are numerous jazz and classical music festivals and lots of local venues offering live music. The city’s State Art Gallery is just one of a number of cultural institutions presenting regularly changing exhibitions and shows. The city is host to many sailing events each summer while you will also find international athletics, equestrian, tennis and rugby events in the sports calendar. Sopot is again the place to visit to relax while brushing shoulders with Polish and international stars and celebrities from television, film, the arts and the sporting world.

Sopot prides itself on the wide range of options we offer which provide for an active and healthy lifestyle. The city is criss-crossed with modern cycle paths which can take you along the beachside promenade up into the more challenging terrain of the nearby forests. The air-quality in the city is both some of the best in the country and the proximity of the city to the sea mean that people have been visiting for over 200 years to breath in the iodine rich sea air. You will find people of all ages strolling through the parks and along the promenades and the beach at all times of the year and residents of Sopot are recognised as some of the satisfied in the country.

I would like to take this opportunity to extend a warm invitation to you and your families to pay us a visit on the ‘Polish Riviera’ and encourage you to take a regular look at this blog and to our social media profiles to find out ideas on how to get the most out of a visit to our wonderful city.

Kindest regards from Sopot,

Anna Golec-Mastroianni