Złote Tarasy (Golden Terraces)
A California-designed complex whose glass diagrid roof — built by Waagner-Biro — won a 2007 European Steel Design Award, set in Warsaw's city centre beside the Palace of Culture and Science.
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Jerde Partnership's 2007 complex cost 1.5 billion złoty and packs retail, offices, and the Skylight skyscraper — one of Warsaw's 30 tallest — onto a single site beside the Palace of Culture and Science. The glass roof alone, designed and built by Waagner-Biro, is worth pausing for.
What to look for
- The glass diagrid roof — a structural lattice built by Waagner-Biro that won the 2007 European Steel Design Award
- The Skylight tower rising above the complex, ranked among the 30 tallest buildings in Warsaw
- The Palace of Culture and Science looming directly next door — a Soviet-era giant dwarfed by nothing
Warszawa Centralna (Warsaw Central) railway station is immediately adjacent — step off the train and you are at the front entrance.
Złote Tarasy (Golden Terraces) is one of 36 sights worth the detour in Warsaw, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Warsaw pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Warsaw
- PGE Narodowy (Kazimierz Górski National Stadium)Poland's biggest football bowl hangs a retractable PVC roof from a central spire — when the mechanism works, it unfolds like a sail over 58,580 seats.
- Palace of Culture and ScienceStalin's skyscraper — Poles nicknamed it "elephant in lacy underwear" and never tore it down.
- Royal Castle in WarsawThe Nazis dynamited this building in 1944. Every room you walk through was rebuilt, stone by stone, between 1971 and 1984.
- Warsaw Old TownBombed flat in WWII and rebuilt from scratch — the world's first fully resurrected historic city core, now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
- National Museum in WarsawThe gallery that brought Nubian Christian art from a Sudanese cathedral to Warsaw.
- Wilanów PalaceBuilt for a warrior king while Poland still existed — and open as a museum since 1805.