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History and tradition
The former Presidential Retreat

Between 1 and 8 July 1931, Krynica Zdrój hosted the Ice Hockey World Championships (the only such event organised in Poland before World War II) under the patronage of Ignacy Mościcki, the President of the Republic of Poland. Mr Mościcki, who was present at the World Championships and became enthralled by Krynica's charm, decided to build the Presidential Retreat at the foot of Góra Parkowa, in the very heart of Krynica Zdrój, near the Main Promenade.

In accordance with the decision of the RP President, the construction of the Presidential Retreat started based on the design by Michał Gutt, a professor of the Warsaw Technical University. The construction was completed in 1933 and the administration and management over the building was entrusted to the managing board of Wawel Royal Castle in Cracow. Since its construction and until 1939, the Presidential Retreat was often visited by President Ignacy Mościcki. One of the President's guests was Marshal Józef Piłsudski, a famous Polish revolutionary and statesman who used to visit Krynica-Zdrój and stay either at the Retreat or the Old Spa House.

During World War II, the Presidential Retreat served as a seat of Third Reich German dignitaries. After the War, the building was still owned by the state and became a holiday home for successive notables of the Polish People's Republic, such as President Bolesław Bierut, a very frequent guest in Krynica, who became famous for presenting a local Krynica artist with a new concertina, and a "comrade" Wiesław Gomułka, upon his assuming the communist control of the state. When in Krynica, Wiesław Gomułka received and hosted in the Retreat such guests as Krynica authorities and communist party activists from Nowy Sącz.

In the sixties and seventies, the Retreat was visited by Józef Cyrankiewicz and Piotr Jaroszewicz, Prime Ministers of Poland, with their spouses, as well as other representatives of the former state authorities, including Deputy Prime Minister Zenon Nowak. At the times of Edward Gierek (a short-lived economic boom in Poland in 1970's), the Office of the Council of Ministers, which managed the Presidential Retreat, decided to extend the building.

The Retreat's extension project was prepared in mid-1970's by a famous architect Jerzy Kuźmienko with participation of Miastoprojekt, a construction company from Warsaw. The construction started in 1977 with an aim to build modern, as then believed, buildings designed for conferences attended by foreign state delegations as well as for stay and recreation of the top state authorities.


In 1981, the investment implementation was suspended. On 1 April 1982, the Office of the Council of Ministers handed over the whole complex to "Zakład Uzdrowisk Krynicko-Popradzkich", a state-owned enterprise combining Krynica and Poprad health resorts. Upon the hand-over of the Presidential Retreat in its incomplete extension stage, the enterprise was only granted funds for "securing the construction", which in fact were too limited to continue the investment.

Despite attempts to complete the investment, as well as the new specification sheet prepared in 1988, it was impossible to finish the construction in the next decade due to the lack of budget funds.


In 1999, the Management Board of Uzdrowisko Krynica-Żegiestów S.A. (a regional health services provider) decided to sell the property to Kolgard Ltd., a company from Warsaw which ordered Krynica architects Ziemomysł Starkiewicz and Janusz Ziembiński to prepare the building adaptation project based on which the investor was granted a permit for further expansion and adaptation of the complex, as well as the construction of an indoor swimming pool and SPA facilities there.

At the end of 2005, the Management Board of Kolgard Ltd. decided to sell the building in incomplete construction stage to an investor from Krakow who finished the reconstruction and started to provide hotel services in July 2008.

Sewer Sulima Samujłło, an architect from Krakow prepared numerous projects to change the complex so that it fulfils current technical conditions and five-star hotel requirements.