Gdańsk Główny Station and Kindertransport Memorial

A red-brick building with a 50-metre clock tower is the first thing most people see when they arrive in Gdańsk by train. Gdańsk Główny station, built in 1894–1900, is one of the city's best-known landmarks, and in front of its entrance stand five bronze children with suitcases – the Kindertransport Memorial, commemorating the Jewish children who left from here for Britain in 1939. The sculptor was one of them.

History of the station

The first railway line reached Gdańsk in 1852, and the site of today's station was first occupied by a makeshift station called Brama Wyżynna (Highland Gate). The new building could only go up after the old moat had been filled in and the western bastions removed; it was designed in the so-called Gdańsk Neo-Renaissance style by Alexander Rüdell, Paul Thömer and Georg Cuny, and was formally opened on 30 October 1900. It had a ticket hall, waiting rooms for four classes, a telegraph office, a police station and rooms reserved for the imperial family.

In 1945 the building was set on fire – the tower survived – and in December 1970 it burned again during the workers' protests on the coast. The latest major refurbishment was completed on 31 July 2023: the main hall regained its historic paintings, coats of arms, panelling and stained glass, and the steep roofs and wooden ticket-office fronts were recreated. The same year the station won the public vote in the Station of the Year competition, and in December 2023 it was named after the diplomat Mieczysław Jałowiecki.

What to look for

• The clock tower – 50 m high and modelled on the tower of St Catherine's Church; the clock faces are 3.25 m across. Until the railway was electrified, a water tank was hidden inside it.
• Sandstone details on the brick façade and the half-rose window above the main entrance.
• The main hall, with its recreated paintings, coats of arms and early 20th-century colour scheme.

Kindertransport Memorial

Between 3 May and 25 August 1939, four transports of Jewish children left the Free City of Danzig, as Gdańsk then was; their parents were unable to leave. Taken in by British families, 130 children survived. The memorial by Israeli sculptor Frank Meisler was unveiled on 6 May 2009 in the presence of several former Kindertransport children. Meisler was born in Gdańsk in 1929 and was himself rescued by a Kindertransport at the age of ten; his parents were murdered. Similar memorials by the same artist stand in Berlin and at London's Liverpool Street station, where the children's journey ended.

Tripto tip

You can see the station and the memorial free of charge – fifteen minutes is enough. From here it is about 1.3 km on foot to the Main Town, and the nearest tourist information point is in the Highland Gate. The station has a paid car park with 45 spaces, left-luggage facilities and an SKM suburban rail stop, and a tunnel leads to the bus station on ul. 3 Maja.