Centennial Hall in Wrocław

Brief Information

The dome of the Centennial Hall is 67 meters in diameter, and it is this concrete structure that makes the building more than a venue for concerts, exhibitions, and sports. When the hall was built in 1911-1913 to a design by Max Berg, its reinforced-concrete spans were the widest in the world. That is why here it is important to look not only at the size, but also at the boldness of the material: concrete took on a role that at the time was more often entrusted to steel.

The site appeared on the edge of Szczytnicki Park, on the grounds of a former horse-racing track. In place of an open sports space, an early modernist hall arose, with a central volume, exhibition rooms, and foyers around the main hall. This transition from a temporary exhibition area to a durable structure helps explain why the building later became a UNESCO site: it showed a new way of building large public spaces.

What to Notice First

The main focus is how an engineering idea gathers different functions around itself. You can compare the dome with the width of the interior space: the hall was designed not as a decorated box, but as a large open volume for mass events. Alongside it, the 56 exhibition rooms and the foyers around the central hall are important: the layout shows that visitors and exhibitions were meant to move not only through the center, but also around it in a ring.

Outside, this concept is continued by the exhibition complex: the 640-meter-long pergola, the Four Domes Pavilion, and the spire are connected with the hall as parts of a single environment. The spire in front of the entrance appeared in 1948 and changed the formerly static character of the facade. In the interior, later interventions read differently: white plastic curtains, movable stands, and a folding arena stand out clearly against the gray walls. These details show how the experiment of the early 20th century was adapted to new events without turning it into an entirely different building.