The three flying saucers on top of Mount Śnieżka, the highest peak of the Karkonosze and Sudety mountains, have been a distinctive though controversial feature since 1976 when the new building of the observatory was completed.

Report by Elzbieta Krajewska.

Designed by two architects from Wrocław in reinforced concrete, steel and glass, housing a meteorological observatory and a restaurant, the building was raised on the place of an old mountain shelter. It is one of two mountain weather stations in Poland.

Some days ago, staff had to leave the observatory and tourists were evacuated from the restaurant when walls began cracking and the floor moved. The first suspect was an earth tremor but the damage was later attributed to high winds and low temperatures. Now part of the topmost disc of the three has collapsed. The reason is still not certain. Some of the problem could be ice and snow. The former manager of the shelter on Mount Śnieżka, Piotr Krywko, says that in his time it had to be shovelled off.
 
Architect Dagny Ryńska from the University of Technology in Warsaw also points to weather – and the human factor. The damage to the building is currently being assessed by construction inspectors from the Wrocław University of Technology. Then will the fate of the flying saucers on Mount Śnieżka be decided.

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