Moments after arriving in Lodz, central Poland, my taxi driver asks what other Polish destinations I’ve visited. I mention Gdansk, Poznan, Warsaw and Krakow, and he smiles. “Well,” he says. “Lodz is different.”
He mentions the lack of an old town or clearly designated city centre, and I momentarily picture Berlin’s slightly maddening urban sprawl, or cities where post-war concrete monstrosities left me feeling somewhat bleak – neither of which apply to Lodz, it turns out.
Until the 1800s, Lodz was a small city surrounded by farmland, but in 1815, after the French ceded certain areas of Poland to the Russian empire following their defeat during the Napoleonic wars, the Kingdom of Poland was created. Lodz suddenly had access to the Eurasian market, an opportunity embraced by landowner Rajmund Rembieliński, who helped transform it into an economic powerhouse filled with elegant factories and mills, forested parks and Baroque palaces built by wealthy industrialists alongside their factories (living on-site slashed owners’ tax bills).
One of the best examples is Manufaktura, a huge complex of beautiful brick buildings, once Izrael Poznański’s cotton empire and now one of Lodz’s most popular destinations. The beautiful, rust-red factory buildings house a shopping centre, dance school, cinema, restaurants and bars (the chapel-shaped former fire station is possibly the world’s most beautiful Starbucks), although nods to its past abound. At Manufaktura’s Factory Museum, faded photos provide insights into Lodz’s transformation (in the early 1800s, its population grew faster than any other European city), and exhibits include restored looms, one of which an employee fires up, explaining that noise levels in factories were similar to modern jet engines. Workers stuffed bread in their ears to protect their hearing.
The complex’s grandest building is factory owner Poznański’s former home – a neo-Baroque palace which is now a museum. Drawing rooms and ballrooms are explosions of stained glass, gold leaf and ornate plasterwork. At one point, my guide points to sculptures encircling the entire room, bespoke allegories celebrating Poznański’s industrial triumphs.
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