For nearly 50 years, the Silesia Hotel was a distinctive symbol of modern, post-war Katowice. The modernist building opened in 1971 to welcome hundreds of guests arriving in the burgeoning capital of Upper Silesia. The hotel disappeared from the city’s skyline in 2019. Today, all that remains of this architectural icon is an empty plot, photographs and memories.
Green ceramics and a reinforced concrete structure
The Silesia project was developed between 1967 and 1970. Tadeusz Eugeniusz Łobos and Jan Głuch were responsible for the architecture, whilst the structural design was developed by Zenon Poniatowski. Orbis acted as the developer. The ten-storey hotel was built on a reinforced concrete frame filled with aerated concrete. The front and rear façades were clad in shimmering green ceramic tiles from the ‘Kamionka’ Cooperative in Łysa Góra. The side walls, meanwhile, were finished in light-coloured stone, whilst the roof featured a huge ‘Hotel Silesia’ neon sign bearing the Orbis logo. The building was constructed on Ks. Piotra Skargi Street as part of a major modernisation of Katowice’s city centre known as the ‘Blok Zachód’ project. Nearby were the Superjednostka, the Separator, the Dom Prasy, the Zenit and the Skarbek. The Silesia was the fourth ‘LUX’ category hotel in the country and the largest such establishment in what was then the Katowice Voivodeship.
The Silesia Hotel – a luxury destination in the days of the Polish People’s Republic
The Silesia offered 262 guest rooms and nine suites. The building housed three conference rooms, a restaurant seating 180 and a café seating 130, as well as bars, a confectionery shop, a ‘Desa’ department store, a ‘Ruch’ kiosk, a PKO bank branch and a hairdressing and beauty salon. In total, the hotel provided employment for nearly 300 people! After it opened, the Silesia became a very popular and much-loved meeting place for locals, businesspeople and visitors. Among its guests were Czesław Miłosz, Kazimierz Kutz, Krzysztof Penderecki, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Josif Brodsky, Charles Aznavour and Andrzej Wajda. The Swedish and German national football teams also stayed here. In 1999, the cast of the film *Pan Tadeusz*, including Daniel Olbrychski and Marek Kondrat, took up residence at Silesia. The hotel welcomed guests until May 2006 – at which point Orbis deemed its continued operation unprofitable.
The Silesia Hotel in Katowice: the end of an icon
After it closed, the hotel stood empty and fell into disrepair. Damp and mould took hold in its unheated interiors, and the plaster began to crumble. In 2018, some of the remaining furnishings were dismantled and put up for sale in art galleries. The stripped-bare property, heavily ravaged by time, eventually came into the hands of Vastint Poland. A year later, demolition work began. The work was carried out using a 110-tonne excavator with a reach of 42 metres. Before demolition, materials containing asbestos, as well as fixtures and fittings, were removed. Silesia was not listed as a historic monument, which gave the owner considerable freedom to dispose of the property as they saw fit. A year later, there was no trace left of the iconic Silesia. Today, the site is fenced off and stands empty.
Nova Silesia by APA Wojciechowski Architekci
Vastint Poland justified the demolition by citing plans to develop the site with the Nova Silesia project designed by APA Wojciechowski Architekci. The concept envisaged a Moxy hotel with around 150 rooms and two office blocks. A garden and a pedestrian arcade were planned between the buildings. However, construction has not yet begun. The first tender for a main contractor in 2021 was unsuccessful. In 2023, the search for a contractor resumed, and the developer already held a planning permission. The local plan permits a hotel up to 30 metres high here, a building next to Supersam up to 60 metres, and the tallest structure to the north up to 80 metres.
The Silesia Hotel and its legacy
From the perspective of Katowice’s architectural heritage, the loss of the Silesia is deeply regrettable. Designed by the duo of Tadeusz Łobos and Jan Głuch, the hotel was part of an important complex of post-war modernism, and its green ceramic cladding, stone walls, reinforced concrete structure and neon sign had firmly established the building as a feature of the city centre’s landscape. Katowice has lost an authentic relic from the era of great development in the capital of Upper Silesia. Was the Silesia outdated and dysfunctional? Perhaps, but will the new development blend in so well with the city’s skyline and urban space? We shall see.
Source: archimemory.pl, katowice24.info, wkatowices.eu
See also:Architecture in Poland|Modernism|Interesting facts|History |Katowice
