AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Toruń is the city where Nicolaus Copernicus was born, and its planetarium — housed inside an extraordinary 1860s brick gas reservoir in the Old Town — carries on that astronomical legacy with a 15-metre fulldome that projects 7,000 stars above your head in a single, sweeping sky. Named after Professor Władysław Dziewulski, a pioneer of astrophotography who co-founded Toruń's own university, the Władysław Dziewulski Planetarium has drawn over six million visitors since 1994 and ranks among the most-attended planetariums in Europe.↗↗↗
A Gothic Gas Tank Reborn as a Cosmos
The building itself is one of the reasons to come. In 1860, a cylindrical gas reservoir was raised on Franciszkańska Street atop the former garden of a Franciscan monastery, its brick shell designed to echo Gothic forms with crenellated parapets, buttresses, and tall lancet windows — a deliberate nod to the medieval skyline. It was the only gas holder in the city to be fully clad in brick, and after the two larger tanks were demolished in 1927, this one survived as an industrial oddity. By the 1980s it was crumbling ruins.