Cepelia Closes!

It’s really going to happen – months after it was announced that McDonald’s would take over one of Warsaw’s most iconic examples of post-modernist architecture, May 4th will see Cepelia – the structure’s tenant for the previous 53 years – close their doors one final time.

Opened in 1966, the so-called Cepelia Pavilion on the corner of Marszałkowska and Jerozolimskie was the flagship store of a folk art brand founded under Communism to ‘solidify the rural identity of this socialist nation’. Resembling an ‘urban lantern’, the glass-clad building represented the futuristic face of Warsaw, but in more recent years found itself bastardized by sheaths of tacky billboards.

Both McDonald’s and the city’s conservator have vowed to preserve the architectural values of the structure, but given the Rotunda debacle city activists remain wholly unconvinced.