Lodz- City of Reinvention

We are now in lovely Lodz (sounds like woodge.) This city is different from the other cities we've visited as it has no central old town/city square area. Wroclaw (vroswav), where we just left, is pictured here for comparison.

Lodz is a city that was established through industry. There were hundereds of textile factories, the buildings built to house the factory workers and an occassional palace where the factory owners would live. It was a thriving industrial city until (believe it or not) the US outlawed slavery. This so drastically reduced the supply of cotton available for these factories that the whole industry essentially collapsed. It is likely that other factors played a role, too, but this definitley contributed to the decline.

In the enduring spirit of Polish reinvention, Lodz is now renovating these old factory buildings to house museums, offices, etc. The largest project to date is called Manufactura and is now a thriving alternative to a town square.  There is a factory museum there as well as numerous shops, eateries, movie theater, performance spaces, art galleries, public art and venues for all sorts of festivals and events. 

One of the larger buildings has been beatuifully preserved/restored as a hotel that uses the old water storage tank as the swimming pool and nicely blends the feel of the original building with some modern updates necessary to make it a functioning hotel.

Also on property is the longest fountain in Europe, which marks where a river used to run through the town.

The fatory was owned by a Jewish family whose mausoleum we happend to see in the Jewish cemetary we visited today. As I understand, a French company is responsible for funding the Manufactura project.

 We are doing so much here everyday and there are countless interesting stories and photos we'd like to share. It may take a while...