6. Cafeteria

From the very beginning, when the building was the regional headquarters of the Workers’ Party, the place was an in-house cafeteria catering to the staff and their family members. The layout was slightly different than today and it had a terrace on the side of the courtyard.
At the time of the AMU Faculty of History (1990–2015), this was an iconic bar and restaurant run by Ms. Maria Królska. The venue held official dinners, also those after Ph.D. defences. The patrons included e.g. former NATO General Secretary Javier Solana or former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Actress Krystyna Feldman was a regular of the cafeteria for 22 years. As Maria Królska recalled (an account in the holdings of the Enigma Cipher Centre), the artist (…) had two friends in the cafeteria. They would wait for her to have a meal together. When they were not around (…) she would always look for me as she would not like to eat alone. One time, I was busy making arrangements for a banquet and could not have a meal with her. She slammed the door shut and off she went! Yet an hour later she came back as she was hungry. She had her favourite table and when she died, we lit candles there.

The quality of the service was attested by the fact that the restaurant successfully continued its operation also after the Faculty of History moved to Campus Morasko in 2015. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the closing down of the cafeteria.