AQUAPARK SUWAŁKI

Aquapark Suwałki stands on ulica Papieża Jana Pawła II in the far north-east of Poland, a short drive from the Lithuanian border, and is operated as a municipal facility by the town's sport and recreation centre. Construction started in June 2009 and was completed on 21 December 2010; the operator's own project summary gives the wider scheme a total value of just over 47 million złoty, funded from the European Regional Development Fund, the state budget and the town's own money. The pool hall forms part of a leisure quarter that also holds the Suwałki Culture Centre and a hotel, and it was designed from the outset without architectural barriers, including wheelchair places in the spectator stand. A rehabilitation clinic, a fitness club, a conference room, a hairdresser and a sports shop share the building.

The complex divides into a sports half and a recreation half, and nothing on the operator's pages claims thermal or mineral water — this is a treated freshwater pool building rather than a spa. The competition pool measures 25 by 21 metres, satisfies Polish Swimming Federation criteria and is backed by a gallery seating 300, with a separate route from the changing rooms so competitors bypass the leisure area. The recreation pool is irregular in shape and depth and carries most of the attractions: a 56-metre enclosed tube slide indoors, two outdoor tube slides each over 100 metres, an open family slide, an artificial river, massage loungers, wall jets, water whips, a cascade, geysers and three whirlpools holding five people apiece. A learner pool 1.35 metres deep adjoins it, and toddlers have a shallow basin with a mushroom fountain.

The sauna floor sits on the first storey and holds four cabins at different intensities: a Roman steam bath kept at roughly 35–55 °C, a Finnish sauna at 75–110 °C, a sanarium at 50–80 °C and an infrared cabin running from 25 to 60 °C. A second, smaller sauna annexe with one dry and one wet cabin opens directly off the pool hall. The salt cave is a small room whose walls are faced with iodine-bromine salt from the Bochnia mine, with sessions beginning fifteen minutes past each hour. Visitors should note the seasonal rhythm: the operator shuts the upstairs sauna floor for the summer months every year because of low attendance, while the pool zone and the salt cave stay open daily.