Pre-war plans and the decision of 1950

The idea of a large stadium in the Polish part of Upper Silesia first appeared in the interwar period. In 1939 a design was ready, commissioned by Adam Kocur, the mayor of Katowice and chairman of the building committee, and the stadium was to resemble the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. The outbreak of war put an end to those plans. At the end of the 1940s another stadium for 70,000 people was included in the Six-Year Plan, but that idea was not carried out either.

The decision to build was taken on 20 December 1950 at a meeting of the Voivodeship National Council in Katowice. The stadium was to stand in the area of the Voivodeship Park of Culture and Recreation, then being created, today Silesian Park, which was laid out on former spoil heaps and post-mining wasteland. The architect was Julian Brzuchowski, and the works manager was the engineer Wiktor Pade.

Construction: sandstone, granite and volunteer labour

According to some sources work began in 1951, while dzieje.pl writes that construction started in March 1953; in both cases the stadium was finished in 1956. Some of the work was done by specialists brought in from Czechoslovakia. The stadium was built of red and white sandstone, granite and concrete. Sports clubs of the Katowice district added more than 100,000 zlotys to the building committee's funds, and residents of the voivodeship worked 589,938 hours of volunteer labour. The stadium was built at the same time as the Tenth-Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw.

On the western side the bowl was ringed by a semicircle of ticket offices and entrance gates, and to the east of it auxiliary pitches were laid out, lined with avenues of trees. Groups of tall columnar poplars were planted around the stadium.

Opening in 1956 and the “hundred-thousander”

The official inauguration took place on 22 July 1956, the day of the biggest state holiday of the People's Republic of Poland. Poland lost the friendly match against the East German national team 0:2, and according to dzieje.pl there were about 90,000 people in the stands. The first director was Mikołaj Beljung.

The sources describe the capacity of the original structure differently. Some give an official 87,000 seats, dzieje.pl 80,000 seats and a terrace for 20,000 standing fans. Regularly between 90,000 and 100,000 people filled the stands, which is why the stadium was soon nicknamed the “hundred-thousander” (stutysięcznik). According to some sources the attendance record is 130,000 people, set on 2 September 1973 at the Individual Speedway World Championship. According to dzieje.pl the record was set earlier, on 18 September 1963, at the match between Górnik Zabrze and Austria Vienna in the European Champion Clubs' Cup, with 120,000 spectators. Dzieje.pl speaks of an attendance record in general, the other figure refers to a speedway record, so the two may refer to different events.

In 1959 artificial electric floodlighting was installed at the stadium, one of the first in Poland. The symbol of the stadium was the tower in its central part, which housed offices and technical rooms. It was demolished in September 2008 as part of the next stage of reconstruction.

The Witches' Cauldron

The Polish national team has played its most important matches here since 1957. The first of them was a World Cup qualifier against the USSR, won 2:1 with two goals by Gerard Cieślik, in front of about 100,000 spectators. Next to the stadium stands the Gerard Cieślik monument by the stadium, showing the footballer in the kit from that match. In Chorzów there is also the Cieślik bench in Chorzów.

The nickname Witches' Cauldron (Kocioł Czarownic) is linked to the match of 6 June 1973, in which Poland beat England 2:0. The day after the match the British media called the Chorzów stadium the Cauldron of Witches. Later the national team secured qualification for the World Cup at this stadium in 1977, 1985, 2001 and 2022.

The stadium also hosted other disciplines. From 1972 a speedway track ran around the pitch, on which, among other events, the Individual Speedway World Championships were held. In 1969 Nadezhda Chizhova became the first woman to put the shot over 20 metres, setting a world record with 20.09. After the modernisation athletics returned here for good, and next to the stadium stands the Kamila Skolimowska monument.

Reconstruction and the cable roof

The thorough reconstruction began in 1994: the first stage was completed in 1997, the second in 2001. The largest stage began in 2009, when Śląski was competing for the role of a Euro 2012 venue. When it turned out that the championship would not be held in Chorzów, the voivodeship authorities decided to finish the investment and create a multifunctional venue. The plans were changed several times: the stands were to have more than 55,000 seats, the result was 54,378, and the seats were planned in red and white, but the voivodeship board decided on yellow and blue, the colours of Upper Silesia.

The roof was designed by the GMP studio from Aachen. The semi-transparent plastic covering refers to the industrial structures of Upper Silesia, and its area is 43,000 square metres, which makes it one of the largest roofs in Europe. In July 2011 there was a failure during the lifting of the cable structure of the roof over the stands, which halted the work for a long time. An athletics track replaced the speedway track, and the new stadium was opened on 1 October 2017.

What else is nearby

The stadium lies in the heart of Silesian Park, so a visit is easy to combine with other sites: the Silesian Planetarium, the Silesian Zoological Garden, the Upper Silesian Ethnographic Park, the Rosarium, the amusement park Legendia or the Elka cable car. A park railway also runs through the park.