Gliwice Radio Station

The 118 m. high latticework radio transmitting tower at Gliwice in Silesia, made of larch wood, is supposedly the tallest wooden structure in Europe. It dominates the townscape and is sometimes called the ‘Silesian Eiffel Tower’. It was built by Deutsche Reichpost in 1935 when Gliwice was the German town of Gleiwitz. The town was incorporated into Poland after the Second World War. There a four platforms on the tower, the highest of which is reached by a 365-rung ladder. The tower was originally intended for Medium Wave radio broadcasts. It was used for jamming Radio Free Europe and other propaganda broadcasting during the Cold War. The mast now carries antennae for mobile phones.

A museum was established in the transmitter buildings at the foot of the mast in 2004 which shows something of the development of radio as a medium.  It also describes the incident on 31 August 1939 when a detachment of the Nazi SS posed as Polish soldiers and attacked the station, providing one of the pretexts for the German invasion of Poland in the days that followed. 

Gliwice Radio Station
Radiostacja Gliwice
Tarnogórska 129
44-100 Gliwice
Poland
+48 (0) 32 - 3000404
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