Grand Hotel

About

The Sofitel Grand Sopot is a historic five-star beachfront resort hotel on Gdańsk Bay in Sopot, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland.

The Kasino-Hotel opened on June 30, 1927. Built at a cost of 20 million Danzig gulden, it was designed by architect Otto Kloeppel and engineer Richard Kohnke as the most luxurious hotel in Zoppot, at the time located in the Free City of Danzig.

The hotel was requisitioned by the Germany Army during the occupation in World War II. Between 19–26 September 1939, the hotel served as Adolf Hitler 's headquarters, from which he went twice to the outskirts of Warsaw to oversee the invasion of the city. After the war, with Sopot now part of Poland, the hotel was renamed Grand Hotel Sopot in 1946 and placed first under the management of the Gdynia America Line and then, from 1951-1954, under the management of their state-owned successor, the Polish Ocean Lines. In 1954, Orbis, the state travel monopoly, assumed ownership and management of the hotel.

Between 11–16 September 1966, the hotel hosted the 16th Pugwash Conference entitled Disarmament and World Security, Especially in Europe.

On 13 December 1981, the hotel was the site of Operation "Mewa" (Seagull) carried out by the communist secret Security Service (SB) in which a group of Solidarity movement political dissidents was arrested including Lech Dymarski, Jacek Kuroń, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Karol Modzelewski and Jan Rulewski.

In 1990, the hotel launched a casino, the third in Poland after Warsaw and Krakow. In 2006, the French Accor chain assumed management and the hotel was renovated, reopening as the Sofitel Grand Hotel on December 21, 2006. In 2007, the hotel opened a spa.

Orbis sold the hotel to Sinfam Investments in 2024, but Accor continues to manage the property.

Some of the hotel's prominent guests include:

- Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery (Parteikanzlei) and private secretary to Adolf Hitler

- Charles Aznavour, French singer, songwriter and actor

- Josephine Baker, American-born French entertainer, singer and dancer

- Christopher Collins, West End Man and traveller to the far east

- Marlene Dietrich, German-born actress, singer, and entertainer

- Charles de Gaulle, general and president of France

- Hermann Göring, a leading member of the Nazi Party, second in command of the German Third Reich, commander of the Luftwaffe

- Adolf Hitler, Austrian-born leader of the German Third Reich and Nazi Party

- Jan Kiepura, Polish-born singer (tenor) and actor

- Henry Kissinger, American politician and diplomat

- Annie Lennox, Scottish pop musician and vocalist

- Czesław Miłosz, Polish poet and prose writer, Nobel Prize laureate