Łódź

Łódź first appears in records in the 14th century, and King Władysław II Jagiełło granted it town rights in 1423, but for centuries it remained a small private town of the Kuyavian bishops. Annexed by Prussia in 1793, it passed to the Duchy of Warsaw and then, in 1815, to Russian-ruled Congress Poland. In the 1820s officials chose it for textile manufacturing, laying out cotton mill colonies along a long north–south road, Piotrkowska. Tariff-free access to the Russian market, rivers to power the mills and a railway link from 1865 did the rest.

The growth was explosive and deeply unequal. Industrialists such as Karl Scheibler and Izrael Poznański built factories, palaces, schools and churches — Scheibler's Księży Młyn employed 5,000 workers in a single complex — while workers crowded into tenements; in 1905 about 100,000 went on strike and fought troops in the streets. The 1931 census counted 604,000 people: 59 per cent Poles, 32 per cent Jews and 9 per cent Germans. Between the wars the city became a centre of the avant-garde, and in 1931 it opened one of the first museums of modern art in Europe.

Under German occupation the city was renamed Litzmannstadt, and more than 200,000 Jews were forced into its ghetto, the second-largest in occupied Europe and the last major one to be liquidated, in August 1944. After liberation in January 1945 Łódź briefly served as Poland's working capital while Warsaw lay in ruins, and the National Film School opened in 1948. The textile industry collapsed in 1990 and 1991; since then Piotrkowska has been revived, the great mills converted, and the city has rebuilt its economy around business services.

Łódź has a reputation as Poland's industrial, rather unpolished city, and it has turned that into an identity. Its streetscape — mill owners' palaces, red-brick factories and long rows of tenements — is the backdrop for Władysław Reymont's novel The Promised Land, and the converted factories now host design fairs, light festivals and concerts. The city hosted around 60 festivals a year by 2011, and roughly 200 murals cover the blind walls of its tenements, including Poland's largest, a portrait of Geralt of Rivia.

Film is the other great tradition. The National Film School, opened in 1948, trained Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polański and Andrzej Munk among many others, and the city has been nicknamed "HollyŁódź"; the National Centre for Film Culture opened in the old EC1 power plant in 2023. The Philharmonic has borne the name of the pianist Artur Rubinstein since 1984.

The multicultural past is remembered in its buildings — Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox churches, the vast Jewish Cemetery and the Radegast deportation station. Football splits the city between ŁKS and Widzew, both former national champions. Church attendance is among the lowest in Poland, at an estimated 17 per cent of Catholics at Mass in 2023.

Łódź had a population of about 640,000 in 2025, making it the fourth-largest city in Poland, but it has been shrinking and ageing: an estimated 29 per cent of residents are of post-working age. A legacy of the textile years, when the mills employed many women, is one of the highest proportions of women among Poland's large cities.

No major textile company survives, though many small firms still make clothing for export. The city has become a hub for business services, helped by its universities, and foreign investors arrived in numbers in the 2000s, cutting unemployment sharply. The city is also a regional logistics centre.

People live in the old tenements of the centre, in the post-war estates of Retkinia, Teofilów and Widzew, and increasingly in new flats inside converted mills. Trams are the backbone of daily movement and now run out to neighbouring towns. The long-term project is the rail tunnel under the centre linking the city's stations.

Among the city's traditional dishes is zalewajka, a sour cereal and potato soup, often served with mushrooms, kiełbasa sausage and bread; it was first recorded in the 19th century in Łódź and Radomsko. Kapuśniak, cabbage soup, is served here with potato dumplings and pork cracklings, and aspic in its several forms — galareta, zimne nóżki or drygle — was long a comfort and party food in Łódź homes.

The city's bakers have their own specialities: the angielka, a baguette-style roll, and the żulik, a bun with raisins. National favourites such as pierogi and soups appear on menus across the city, and many restaurants in the centre serve the old local soups next to more modern dishes.

Most of the eating happens on and just off Piotrkowska. OFF Piotrkowska, a heritage-listed red-brick factory let only to independent businesses, gathers restaurants, bars and shops around its yards, Manufaktura has its own ring of restaurants, and food trucks are a common sight in the centre and several neighbourhoods.