Nowa Huta

Nowa Huta was begun in 1949 as a new town beside Krakow, built around the Lenin steelworks, and it was designed whole: a central plaza with five avenues radiating from it, blocks of socialist realist housing in a monumental classical idiom with courtyards and arcades, and a plan that borrowed from Renaissance ideal-city theory as much as from Soviet practice. It was intended in part to balance Krakow's intelligentsia with a working-class population. The intention did not hold - Nowa Huta became a centre of opposition in the 1980s, and the fight to build the Lord's Ark church, permitted only after years of pressure, is part of that story. Today it is a district of Krakow of two hundred thousand people, increasingly appreciated architecturally, with tours by Trabant, museums in a former cinema and a preserved 1950s flat, and a network of nuclear shelters under the blocks that can be visited.

What you actually see

• Five radiating avenues - a designed plan from one central plaza.
• Socialist realist blocks - monumental classical housing with arcaded courtyards.
• The Lord's Ark church - built after years of official refusal.
• Shelters under the blocks - the Cold War network, open on guided tours.

When to go

April to October. A day.

Honest expectations

It is a residential district, not a museum quarter - the interest is in the plan and the buildings, which takes some reading. Shelter tours must be booked. The steelworks is a working plant and not generally open.

Nearby

Krakow's old town is half an hour west by tram.