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Jarosław Suchan
Director of the Museum of Art in Łódź
Łódź is an unusual patchwork comprising completely disparate elements – and that’s what makes it so unique. The city is atypical, turn almost any corner and there will be a surprise in store – whether for your eyes or senses. In my opinion, the greatest attraction of Łódź is the very fact that it shatters our expectations and imagination adopted on earlier trips to other, seemingly similar, cities. Let us go on an imaginary walk. First, see Księży Młyn >1 (from the Łódź Fabryczna railway station towards Plac Zwycięstwa) and the remnants of one of the world’s largest nineteenth century industrial complexes. In fact, it’s a city within a city – with factories, palaces, workers’ houses, parks, schools, hospitals and even a fire station. Most of the buildings were in ruins; the original architectural design was somehow distorted by the later, not so successful architectural execution. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is unusual – impressive factory halls (some of which were recently converted into fashionable lofts), Grohman’s villa, with the interior possibly designed by Otto Wagner himself, a fantastic secessionist electric power station building etc. When you wander around the district you can’t help feeling that you are discovering a kind of forgotten world and it doesn’t matter if thousands of globetrotters have discovered it before us. After Księży Młyn, I would recommend moving on to Ruda Pabianicka, the wooded hills in the southern part of the city stretching across to the Ner river, with its picturesque little lakes. Walking along the leafy alleys you can unexpectedly come across the dilapidated remnants of fantastic villas from the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a time when it was
the favourite spot for the Łódź bourgeoisie. One wooden villa that used to belong to a Jewish industrialist, Szyja Światłowski, is particularly impressive. The American film director Robby Henson chose it for the setting of his horror film House. The old cemetery is the next must-see. Or in fact three cemeteries located next to one another: Catholic, Protestant and Russian Orthodox. Their
neighbourhood is testimony to the multicultural history of the city. Amongst trees, bushes and an unkempt lawn lie the tombstones of eminent Łódź industrialists. These structures, the size and splendour of which befit palaces and castles, tell us a lot about the prosperity of the Łódź of yesteryear: the Łódź that has disappeared forever. Of course, there is also Piotrkowska street – the city’s
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main drag, the monumental palaces of Izaak and Karol Poznański >2, Łagiewnicki Forest, the biggest urban forest in Europe, the modernist Montwiłła-Mireckiego district, the Jewish cemetery with the tombstones of the greatest figures in the history of Łódź. On top of all that, the courtyards, deserted little factories, forgotten villas and palaces, parks and squares; an unbelievable maze which is best explored without recourse to guidebooks so that you allow yourself to be surprised.
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