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Lodz - City of Creative Energy
Lodz, the largest city in Poland, aside from Warsaw, is a cultural phenomenon and a fascinating
place inhabited by distinguished artists, scientists and industrialists. It is a modern city deeply
rooted in tradition. A city of the multicultural heritage of Poles, Germans, Jews and Russians. A
city of the industrial revolution, of the steam engine and the electrical era. It is the city housing
the world-famous Modern Art Museum (Muzeum Sztuki Wspolczesnej) and the Lodz Film School
(Lodzka Szkola Filmowa). Lodz – a city of creative energy, vibrating with the pulse of our
modern era.
A dialogue of four cultures
From the 19th century Lodzhas been the Promised Land for many nations: Poles, Germans, Jews
and Russians. Among them were many great industrialists, merchants, bankers, architects and
writers who created a modern city and its culture. The Jewish community at the turn of the 20th
century was estimated at two hundred thousand and in that number there were the great
industrialists - Izrael Kalmanowicz Poznański, musicians - Artur Rubinstein and Aleksander
Tansman, the distinguished architect - Dawid Lande and a master of poetry - Julian Tuwim. The
Shoah, the darkest episode in the history of Europe, took the lives of all the members of the
Jewish community in Lodz. The way of death led from the ghetto in Łódź, (called Litzmannstadt
by the Germans), to the Nazi death camps in Oświęcim (Auschwitz) and Chełmno (Kulmhof). The
remaining material symbols of the Jewish culture, the inherent parts of the cultural landscape of
Lodz are historic buildings such as the centre of the Jewish community (no. 18, Pomorska
Street), the Reicher synagogue (no. 28, Rewolucji 1905 Street) and the biggest necropolis in
Europe covering an area of 4100 acres (no. 40, Bracka Street) where one hundred and sixty
thousand graves and seventy thousand Jewish headstones, masebhas, are preserved. In the
1830’s German weavers and cloth makers came to Lodz in great numbers; the German
industrial culture played a significant role in the development of the city. It has left priceless
reminders of technical and urban history: factories and the haughty residences of the
manufacturers, power and communication machinery, historic tenements, three Evangelical
churches, theatres, schools and the cemetery next to Ogrodowa Street. The powerful textile
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Lodz - City of Creative Energy
empires created by industrialists of German origin, Scheibler, Geyer, Grohman and Heinzel,
have survived to this day and are used as the foundations of various institutions. The over one
hundred-year-old presence of Russians in Lodz is related to the time when Poland did not exist
as a nation and the city, paradoxically, had its moment of dynamic development. The remnants
of that Russian culture are the Eastern Orthodox Churches, chapels, the headquarters of
governing bodies and examples of sepulcher art in Łódź cemeteries. The most significant trace
of those times is the St. Alexander Nevsky’s Eastern Orthodox Cathedral (Kilinskiego Street).
Built in the neo-Byznatine style on an octagon plan, the church houses a magnificent iconostas.
The Festival of the Four Cultures, held annually in September, reflects this multicultural
heritage of Lodz.
City within the city
The old textile districts illustrate the power and the investing momentum of those outstanding
industrialists. In Tymienieckiego Street stands the oldest industrial plant in the city called
Kopisch’s Bleachery (Bielnik Kopischa) (1826), and next to Piotrkowska Street is Ludwik Geyer’s
White Factory (Biała Fabryka Ludwika Geyera), inside which the first steam powered engines
were installed and used. Nowadays the building houses the Textile Museum (Muzeum
Włókiennictwa) and the International Fabric Triennial (Miedzynarodowe Triennale Tkaniny) –
the most important of its kind in the world.
One of the most interesting monuments of the industrial age in Lodz is Ksiezy Mlyn, built by
Scheibler in the 1870’s. This city within a city, connected by a private railway network is
comprised of residential houses, factory buildings, spinning mills, warehouses, workers’ houses,
a hospital, a school, shops, a sports park and a power station. The massive red brick walls,
mighty towers, monumental gates and chimneys are the symbols of the 19th century’s Industrial
Revolution - Ksiezny Mlyn remains one of the magnificent monuments to European industrial
culture.
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Pearls of European Art Nouveau
Leopold Kindermann’s villa built in the Art Nouveau style (Wólczańska Street) is the most
beautiful example of this style in Poland. The picturesque, asymmetric block of the building
topped by a high roof is finely encrusted with floral and figural motifs and stained-glass
windows. Equally intriguing, surprising by the lightness of its form and stylistic elegance, is the
Art Nouveau house (built in 1909) at no. 100 Piotrkowska Street (the famous Esplanada
restaurant) distinguishing itself with its fine ornamentation and artistic, hand-wrought
balustrades. Equally beautiful is Reinhold Richter’s villa (no. 6 Skorupki Street) worth seeing for
the ornamentation of its front elevation. Lodz is a particular encyclopedia of the Art Nouveau
style in its different functional variants: villas, governmental buildings, factories and
outbuildings. The old Łódź necropolis contains many Art Nouveau tombstones and sculptures.
The Lodz Film School
For those who enjoy the cinema all over the world the name ‘Filmowka’ or Lodz Film School
evokes a smile and words of respect. Among the hundreds of graduates of this school, worldfamous directors, cameramen and actors there are Academy Award Laureates and winners of
prestigious prizes in Cannes: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Roman Polański, Andrzej Wajda and
Krzysztof Zanussi. The Karol Wilhelm Scheibler palace contains the only Museum of
Cinematography in Poland. It has a collection of exhibits relating to the history of film
technology and production.
Other creators in cinema also have their festivals in Lodz Mediaschool - The International
Festival of Film and Television Schools, Reanimacja - The Festival of Animation, The Festival of
Nature films and the Forum of European Cinema. Cinema can also be found in the city
landscape along the Alley of the Stars (Aleja Gwiazd) - the pavements of Piotrkowska Street with plaques with the names of stars of Polish cinema inscribed on them.
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Factory of trade and entertainment
The modern center of art, trade and entertainment, Manufaktura, has been created inside the
former ‘factory empire’, built from characteristic red brick, once belonging to one of the most
prominent owners of many industrial buildings, Izrael Kalmanowicz Poznanski. There are also
plans to open a four-star hotel belonging to the Andels chain, in the five storey cotton factory
(170 meters in length). The form and the quality of the adaptation of the building, the
functionality program and the interior aesthetics are highly regarded and have been nominated
for the international MIPIM award in the category of trade centers. Manufaktura contains an
IMAX cinema, restaurants, bowling alleys, a climbing wall, a museum and a number of
boutiques and shops of reputed brands. Just round the corner in Ogrodowa Street in the Pałacu
Poznańskich (the Poznański family Palace), the biggest industrial residence in Europe, is the
Museum of the History of the City of Lodz (Muzeum Historii Miasta Lodzi). Walking through the
museum halls we can learn a great deal about the history of the city, the interiors of mansions
arranged according to the tastes of those rich industrialist, and the history of outstanding
citizens of Lodz. One of the ‘symbols’ of the city is the avantgarde artistic group, Łódź Kaliska,
renowned for their sophisticated happenings and exploits rebelling against the artificiality of
‘elitist art’ and mass culture.
City street salon
Piotrkowska Street is the cultural center of Lodz, the axis of the development of the 19th
century city and a contemporary representative salon. Among the street’s interesting points is
Liberty Square (Plac Wolności), which is in the shape of a regular octagon. The Town Hall – one
of the oldest historical buildings of industrial Lodz, stands on one side of the square, and next to
it, on the opposite side of Piotrkowska Street, is the Catholic Church of the Holy Ghost, together
with the Archeological and Ethnographical Museum. In the centre of the square stands the
characteristic monument of Tadeusz Kościuszko, visible almost from any point on the 4 km long
Piotrkowska Street. On both of its sides there are numerous restaurants, artistic basements and
clubs and an endless gallery of shops and boutiques with clothes produced by well known Polish
and European companies. Piotrkowska Street never falls asleep. When there’s no trade there’s
entertainment, when there’s no singing there’s dancing. Many concerts, happenings, sports
competitions and Fairs take place along this street - the cultural salon of the city. Piotrkowska
Street is also a unique and rich gallery of urban architecture. The outstanding monuments are
Hermana Konstadta’s palace (no. 53) with the characteristic atlases, the banking house of
Maksymilian Goldfeder (no. 77), the tenement house of Jan Peterslige (stonemason) with the
statue of Jan Guttenberg on its facade (no. 86), Juliusza Kindermanna’s house with the Venetian
mosaic (no. 137) and the headquarters of the Krusche & Ender company (no. 143), delightful for
its floral decoration. The side wall of the tenement house at no. 152 is decorated with the
biggest wall graffiti in Poland presenting Łódź city landscapes. At Piotrkowska (no. 265) stands
the tallest church in the city, the St. Stanislaw Kostka’s Metropolitan Cathedral. Its towers
exceed 100 m in height. Over the last few years Piotrkowska Street has started to play the role
of a sculpture gallery with figural monuments incorporated into it and devoted to the people,
events, and the monuments of three manufacturers; the statues of the writer Reymont’s
strongbox, Jaracz’s Fotel, (distinguished director and actor), Rubinstein’s piano and the
characteristic Tuwim bench. A special homage to the citizens of Łódź is the Monument of the
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People constructed at the turn of the millennia made from thirteen thousand bricks with the
names of the donors cut into them.
official website of the city of Lodz
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