50 floors, 212 meters high, 1,142 steps, 30 000 tons of steel, 144 000 m3 of concrete and glass 40 000 sq.m, 2700 km of cables – it is hard to imagine. Those are the numbers that represent the tallest building in Poland, Sky Tower, located in Wroclaw.
On the 49th floor is a publicly accessible viewpoint – we couldn’t miss the opportunity …
The entrance to the top is possible every half hour. Detailed times are available on the website and at the ticket office. Oh, the ticket office – an interesting fact: while the entrance to the corridor leading to the elevator is located outside the building (from Gwiaździsta Street), the ticket office is inside the shopping mall, on the first floor. So to get a ticket, you have to go to the mall, walk through the shopping center, and then come back at the appointed time with the ticket at the door on the outside of the building. Visitor convenience above all, right?
Another “convenience” is the fact that you need to wait a long time for a free slot to go up. At the ticket office the number of guests for every hour is displayed, however, on the website we can’t view this information before arrival. Also, there is no option to book a ticket online. Online booking is available only for organized groups of at least 20 people. As a result, you need to select the first free slot available when you are buying tickets. We wanted to go together, so we needed to wait 1 hour to the slot with 5 free positions.
Fortunately, it was then lunchtime and we took advantage of a restaurant located in the shopping mall. While we waited, the children were enjoying Kinect games, which were projected on one of the walls near the playground.
At the appointed hour, we were waiting to go to the top. Standing under the building and looking up, we could see it was huge. We rode to the top in a high-speed elevator. In a moment, we were on the 49th floor, and our eyes took in an amazing view. Worth every penny.
The outer walls on the observation deck are glass from top to bottom. So it doesn’t restrict the view of the city. We were lucky to go there in great weather – it’s important not to go up on a foggy day. From the top, we saw a fantastic panoramic view of Wrocław. Seeing this, Justine boldly said, “I like it” and ran towards one of the windows without any fear in her eyes.
As the joke goes, the observation deck on Sky Tower is the only place in town where you can see the panorama of Wrocław without Sky Tower.
There is no equally high building nearby, so impressions are completely different than on the panoramic terrace of the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, where the surrounding buildings interfere with the view.
In good weather conditions, you can see Ślęża Mountain (we remembered our trip with the children to the top of it), and also Wroclaw Stadium, the old town. People looked like ants from up there. The impression is similar to that of Kolejkowo, which we visited earlier, the only difference is that here the small things are real. The beautiful view compensated for the initial bad impression we had about the circumstances of purchasing tickets.
For technical reasons, you cannot walk all the way around the observation deck, but almost the entire circle is accessible. Without any problems, we could look in any direction.
Prices are more expensive on weekends, cheaper during the week. We paid on Saturday a normal ticket PLN 15 and PLN 8 per child.