Review, history, design and photos
In March 2006, I stayed at the elegant InterContinental Warsaw. I remember it vividly because the fabulous 1048 m2 RiverView Wellness Center on the 43rd and 44th floor, which offers with gym, pool, sauna, Jacuzzi, yoga classes and personal fitness programs, seduced me to do exercises with weights that were a bit too heavy for me. I left the gym with back pain and was forced to a stop at the hotel sauna. Nevertheless, I look very much forward to go back. The 16 x 6 meter pool alone is worth a stop at this excellent luxury hotel. In the summer of 2013, when it was fully booked, I just had a quick look around it and it seems still as fresh as seven years ago. Unfortunately, as in 2006, the chef – another one – of the gastronomic restaurant was on holiday. Therefore, I have never tasted it so far.
The InterContinental Warsaw was built from 2001 to 2003 as Poland’s highest hotel with Europe’s highest pool at a total cost of €113 million. It is 156 meters high and has 45 floors. The elevators run 4 meters per second. The five-star property rooms and suites offer great, panoramic views of the city of Warsaw.
Tadeusz Spychala is the Polish architect who prepared the project. In Warsaw he also designed the Europlex building at Pulawska street, the EuroPolGaz building and the PZU towers. The public areas were designed by the British company Jestico & Whites, the rooms by the InterContinental Hotels Group and PORR from Austria.
The luxury hotel offers 12 fully equipped conference rooms, all of them with natural daylight and state-of-the-art equipment. It features 328 guest rooms and 78 apartment suites designed for longer stays. The room size varies between 34 m2 and 62 m2, which is pretty large even by the five-star standard.
All rooms feature feature separate bathtubs and large, glass-enclosed walk in showers. The 76 fully equipped and elegantly furnished suites offer work area, space to relax and kitchenette with a complete range of crockery, cutlery, glasses and linen.
The Residence Suites are apartments combining elegance with practicality. You can chose between intimate studios of 39.7 square meters with double bed, two-seat sofa, desk, en-suite bathroom with separate walk-in shower and full equipped kitchen with breakfast bar, well-appointed one-bedroom apartments of 42.4 square meters with a separate bedroom and living room, a two-seat sofa, desk and dining room table, and spacious two-bedroom apartments of 84 square meters with two bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, living room with dining table and a guest bathroom.
The rooms and suites are equipped with elegant wall tapestries, carpets, wood panelings, closets and bedside tables in different types of woods. The bathrooms feature mainly elegant stone walls and glass walk-in showers, which make the already large baths look even more spacious.
The hotel is located centrally, some one-hundred meters from the Central Train Station of Warsaw, just opposite the Palace of Culture and Science, a Stalinist time landmark building. The commercial and financial centre as well as the Old Town are within walking distance.
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The spa offers spectacular views. Photos © InterContinental Warsaw.
The fabulous pool high up in the building. Photo © InterContinental Warsaw.
Warsaw’s skyline. Photo © InterContinental Warsaw.
The Palace of Culture and Science, a Stalinist time landmark building, situated opposite the five-star hotel.Photo © InterContinental Warsaw.
The impressive five-star hotel façade made of glass, aluminum and granite. The hotel was the work of a team of US-Americans, British, Polish and Austrians. The building has a three meter-thick ground-floor slab foundation, interlocked with the surrounding diaphragm walls, which are more than thirty meters deep and first served to support the excavation walls. Historically interesting is that on the area was a canal, which served Jews during the Second World War to escape, because the area was situated at the border to the Jewish ghetto. Photos © InterContinental Warsaw.
The façade of the luxury hotel is made of glass, aluminum and granite. Photo © InterContinental Warsaw.
View of a hotel suite. Photos © InterContinental Warsaw.
A suite at the luxury hotel. Photo © InterContinental Warsaw.
A Standard King Room. Photos © InterContinental Warsaw.
View of a hotel room. Photos © InterContinental Warsaw.
Partial view of a bathroom. Photos © InterContinental Warsaw.
View of a double guest room. Photo © InterContinental Warsaw.
Downtown Restaurant. Photos © InterContinental Warsaw.
The hotel lobby. Photo © InterContinental Warsaw.
