It is the highest building in Poland. It serves a very important function

Kasprowy Wierch is one of the most popular peaks of the Tatra Mountains, and you can use a few more words starting with “naj” to describe it.

Observatory in the Tatra Mountains. It’s a unique building

Here you can admire, among others: the highest sunset in Poland. The managers of the popular cable car encourage you to buy tickets for the afternoon and spend romantic moments without crowds of tourists in this incredibly beautiful place.

Perhaps not everyone knows that we can also find the highest building in Poland here. It houses a meteorological observatory and an organizational unit of the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management. It is subordinated to the Hydrological and Meteorological Service Department of the IMWM Branch in Kraków. They were also included in the network of benchmark stations of the World Meteorological Organization (the so-called Reference Climatological Station).

The observatory is located at an altitude of 1,987 m above sea level. For comparison, the popular circular observatory on Śnieżka, the highest peak of the Karkonosze Mountains and in the entire Sudetes, was built at an altitude of 1,602 m above sea level.

Beautiful views of the mountains from the “fortress”

Apart from the height, the location of the observatory is also impressive. The building is located barely a kilometer from the border between the Western and High Tatras. Its employees have wonderful views of the abyss and Kocioł Suchy from the northern windows, and of the Cicha Valley from the southern windows. Sometimes they also notice the surreal Brocken Specter.

Observatory employees observe atmospheric conditions from every angle – they perform synoptic and climatological measurements, observe rainfall, solar radiation intensity and other atmospheric phenomena. When it starts raining, snowing, fog or other meteorological phenomena, they constantly enter data into the computer.

The place was officially opened in 1938. The director of the National Meteorological Institute and physicist, Jan Blaton, delivered the commemorative speech. 10 years later, the scientist died in Świnica after slipping on snow. The name of a steep gully in the Slovak High Tatras comes from his name.

The building – “fortress” – was designed by Anna and Aleksander Kodelscy, the creators of the designs of all stations of the Kasprowy Wierch Cable Railway. The goal was to create a solid granite structure that would resist erosion. It worked perfectly.