Manufaktura

Izrael Poznanski's cotton mill was one of the largest industrial complexes in nineteenth-century Europe, a walled block of red brick spinning and weaving halls, warehouses and workshops covering some thirty hectares beside the owner's palace. It closed in the 1990s and was redeveloped between 2002 and 2006 into Manufaktura: the halls kept and cleaned, a large public square opened in the middle where the yards were, and the space filled with shops, restaurants, a cinema, a hotel and, importantly, cultural tenants - the Lodz Museum of Art occupies a former weaving mill as MS2, showing a collection of twentieth-century avant-garde that is one of the best in Europe, and there is a factory museum covering the mill's history and working conditions. It is a shopping centre, and people who dislike that will say so, but the brick is genuine and the conversion kept more of it than most such projects do.

What you actually see

• A thirty-hectare mill complex - red brick halls, warehouses and workshops.
• An opened public square - where the factory yards were.
• MS2 - the art museum's avant-garde collection in a former weaving mill.
• A factory museum - the mill's history and its working conditions.

When to go

All year. Half a day.

Honest expectations

It is primarily a shopping and leisure centre and is busy and commercial. The museums close on Mondays and are separate tickets. The historic interpretation is thin outside the factory museum.

Nearby

Poznanski Palace is next door; Piotrkowska is a walk south-east.