City reinvented
Until recently perceived as the city of factories (known as "Textile Industry Kingdom" or "Polish Manchester"), Łódź is currently the third largest city in Poland and a modern one, open to changes and undergoing constant transformations. It is the industrial and cosmopolitan past that defined the unique character of the city.
Łódź is a city with an unusual history. Even though it was granted town privileges in 1423, it was not only until the 1820s that it started growing considerably, attaining economic significance. Within just 60 years, Łódź underwent a massive change. The tiny commune of craftsmen it was in the 1850s turned into a powerful industrial centre with a population of around half a million in 1910.
Nothing illustrates the dynamic growth of Łódź during the industrial revolution better than a 20-fold increase in population which Łódź observed between 1850 and 1900. The pace and the scope of Łódź's progress in these years can only be compared with the fastest growing cities in the world in that time, such as Manchester, Chicago, Los Angeles or Yokohama.
The rapid industrialization and the dynamic development of the textile sector contributed to the city’s status of a powerful industrial centre, and shaped its unique architecture which became the visit card of Łódź: red bricks factories, eclectic tenements houses and splendid palaces and villas of industrialists.
