Lodz—Full-Day Tour from Warsaw by Private Car

Księży Młyn (“Priestermühle”) – a well-preserved, complete industrial district with a factory, workers’ housing, a hospital, school, fire station, the owner’s villa, stalls, and a garden. In recent years, the factory has been converted into exclusive apartments. The villa houses a museum showcasing luxurious 19th-century interiors. Not far away is Scheibler Palace with the Museum of Cinematography. Corner of Przędzalniana St. and Tymienieckiego St.

This five-kilometre-long promenade is Łódź’s most important playground and embodies everything this city is trying to achieve in the coming years. It is no wonder that visitors will spend a great deal of time on this street. Piotrkowska not only keeps moving forward, but also offers more alternative culture, excellent cuisine and more post-industrial complexes for you to explore!

OFF Piotrkowska is a completely different, unique and alternative offering.
Located directly on ul. Piotrkowska (hence the name), between numbers 138 and 140, the complex has taken over the beautiful old cotton mills of the former Ramisch factory. Originally from Czechoslovakia, the Ramisch family moved to Łódź in the 1830s and bought the first plot of land in 1850, where construction of the factory began. Adjacent plots were purchased as the empire expanded. By 1909, the factory in the heart of the city was firing on all cylinders. Production continued until 1990, after which the buildings and their rich heritage were all but forgotten, and the area fell into a sad and run-down state.

A walk through the courtyard at Piotrkowska 3 (or from ul. Zachodnia 56) truly shows how such a simple idea can have a major impact. Róża’s Passage (Pasaż Róży) brings light and intrigue to this connection between two main streets, which once contained a dark, run-down former hotel that was later converted into apartments by creating funky mosaics that reflect natural light across thousands of shards of mirror. The effect is breathtaking and truly transforms the surrounding buildings. The creator is Joanna Rajkowska (also responsible for the palm tree in Warsaw!), who chose the name after her daughter Róża, who was diagnosed at a young age with retinoblastoma, a rare form of eye cancer. After chemotherapy, she was able to see again. Róża’s Passage experienced the same journey, in the author’s own words, “from not seeing to seeing”. If you are at the very beginning of Piotrkowska and near Plac Wolności, you simply cannot miss this courtyard of urban art.

Manufaktura is today the result of Poland’s largest renovation project since the reconstruction of Warsaw’s Old Town in the 1950s. The site’s history is marked by fortunes made and lost, war, nationalisation and misery. What you see before you was once a series of factories producing various textiles, built at the end of the 19th century.
Designed by Hilary Majewski, a graduate of St Petersburg University, the mills were built in an industrial style from red brick, with occasional Art Nouveau flourishes. They were owned by Izrael Poznański, a Jewish merchant who recognised the need for high-quality textiles in the eastern markets of Russia, Japan and China. Since Łódź was the westernmost city of the Russian Empire at the time, Poznański could combine Western textile expertise and industrial practices with unlimited access to Eastern markets. It was a profitable combination—one that made him a fortune and put Łódź on the map.

1-hour lunch break