Wielka Aleja in Gdańsk is a unique space and one of the city’s most valuable green landmarks. For the past three years, together with the Aniołki District Council, we’ve been organizing its festival on the last weekend of June! Join us for the Wielka Aleja Festival: walks, workshops, and an exhibition.
Great Avenue Festival 2023 — Walks and Workshops
#alejawidoczna We want to highlight the prominence of Wielka Aleja, not only as a thoroughfare and urban transit route, but also as a landmark in Gdańsk. We are committed to showcasing its significant role in the city’s development and uncovering its complex history, as well as the unquestionable natural and urban assets of the Aniołki neighborhood.
#publicavenue The Great Avenue Festival is meant to bring residents together and foster a sense of community. It aims to show how public spaces help build civic values and promote the common good. In the past, it was the city’s residents who fought to preserve the avenue and pooled their resources to plant it. During the picnic, we’ll create a unique place for us to come together.
#greenpath We want to foster an environmental mindset, which remains an integral part of life in Gdańsk. We’ll talk about the history of green spaces in our city. This is also an opportunity to discuss the inclusion of green spaces in the historic monuments registry.
In 2021, as part of the “Święto Wielkiej Alei” event, we organized “Concert Stories” in collaboration with the Baltic Opera, featuring a performance by the Opera Quartet and hosted by Jerzy Snakowski. We invited visitors to join historical walking tours organized by the Gdańsk Museum. Marcin Dymiter, in turn, led a sound walk. There were also plant workshops and cyanotype workshops, a book fair featuring Gdańsk publishers, and a disc golf course. The event culminated in a concert by the Jazxing duo and the “Great Quiz about Wielka Aleja” with prizes.
Watch the video from the event.
More About Wielka Aleja
This is a unique area on a national scale—it is Poland’s oldest urban green space, taking the form of a two-kilometer-long, four-row avenue. In the 19th century, alongside Paris’s Champs-Élysées, it was considered one of the most representative examples of this type of landscape design. Stretching along the Aniołki district, it is an integral part of the city’s landscape and, as such, a place full of mysterious nooks and crannies and history.
It was founded in the late 1760s by Gdańsk Mayor Daniel Gralath and has survived to this day despite its turbulent history: the partitions of Poland, reconstruction by residents following the Napoleonic Wars, numerous landscaping projects and plantings, the introduction of horse-drawn trams, and finally cars and bike paths, as well as renovations in recent years. To this day, it is surrounded by important Gdańsk landmarks such as the Baltic Opera, historic and historic villas from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Medical University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk University of Technology, and parks within the cemetery grounds, including the historic Steffens Park.
This event is co-funded by the City of Gdańsk.
