Technical monuments

Księży Młyn in Łódź

Księży Młyn is Łódź's mightiest factory complex — a group of textile factories built on this ground from 1824 onwards, which in the 19th century became the industrial empire of Karol Scheibler. It was modelled on English industrial settlements: alongside the spinning mills and warehouses operated gasworks, railway sidings and a fire station, as well as a hospital and a school.

The cotton king

Karol Wilhelm Scheibler was called the „cotton king" — from the mid-1870s his works concentrated around 60% of production and 55% of the workers of the entire textile industry of the Kingdom of Poland, and his estate at the time of his death was estimated at 14 million roubles. Workers lived in famuły — brick houses arranged in three rows, 25 buildings housing some 3,000 residents; in the smallest 24 m² flats as many as 12 people sometimes lived together. Today the revitalised famuły still serve housing functions, and the city's longest spinning mill has become luxury lofts.

Industrialists' palaces

The Scheibler Palace at pl. Zwycięstwa 1 houses the Museum of Cinematography — with a 1900 fotoplastikon and an Oscar for Paweł Pawlikowski's film „Ida" among the exhibits. The Herbst Palace at ul. Przędzalnianej 72, belonging to Scheibler's son-in-law, holds a branch of the Museum of Art with the famous Mirror Room, and in the former carriage house you will see the Gallery of Old Art with paintings by Matejko or Wierusz-Kowalski.

A film location

On the cobblestones in front of the school at Księży Młyn the workers' revolt scene in „Ziemia Obiecana" (The Promised Land) was filmed, and the historic fire station at ul. Tymienieckiego served as the police station in the „Komisarz Alex" TV series.