Łódź (pronounced roughly "Woodge") is Poland's third-largest city and one of its most underrated, a place that was utterly remade by 19th-century industrial capitalism and is now remaking itself again. In the 1800s, it exploded from a small market town into a massive textile manufacturing centre, drawing German, Jewish, and Russian industrialists alongside tens of thousands of workers to what became known as the "Manchester of Poland." The palaces they built — monumental, ostentatious, occasionally beautiful — still stand along Piotrkowska Street and in the courtyard of what is now the Manufaktura complex.
The textile empire collapsed long ago, and decades of post-war decline left the city with a strange, melancholy beauty: vast red-brick factory halls standing empty, workers' tenement courtyards going to seed, a Jewish cemetery — the largest surviving Jewish cemetery in Europe — stretching for acres across the northern suburbs. But Łódź has been fighting back. The old Poznański factory has become Manufaktura, a vast cultural and shopping complex that is genuinely impressive. The Museum of Art in two locations — ms1 and ms2 — holds one of the most important modern art collections in Poland, assembled since the 1930s.
Film is the city's other claim on the world's attention. The famous Łódź Film School, which trained Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieślowski, and Andrzej Wajda, is still here, and the city has a lively film culture. The Walk of Fame on Piotrkowska Street, with handprint plaques of Polish film legends, is both touching and slightly provincial — which is very Łódź.
Piotrkowska Street itself, stretching nearly 5km from end to end, is one of the longest commercial pedestrian streets in Europe and the backbone of city life. You walk the length of it to see the city: grand 19th-century tenements give way to art galleries, cafes, and the occasional spectacular factory courtyard. Łódź won't be for everyone, but if you're drawn to industrial cities with rough edges and genuine character, it's one of the most interesting places in Poland.