The Poznański Palace, now the Museum of the City of Łódź, stands at the edge of the Manufaktura complex as the most extravagant testament to 19th-century industrial wealth in the city. Izrael Poznański built it in stages from the 1880s onward, adding wings and towers in a flamboyant eclectic style mixing Renaissance, Baroque, and other historicist elements until the whole thing reached a kind of magnificent excess.
The interior is preserved with its original fittings — grand staircases, painted ceilings, tiled floors — and houses a permanent exhibition on the history of Łódź that is worth the visit for the setting alone. The contrast between the palace's opulence and the workers' tenements that once surrounded it on three sides says more about 19th-century capitalism than any textbook.