2 Best Sights in Excursions from Warsaw, Poland

This model city within a city was founded by the Scheibler and Grohman industrialist families, who were initially competitors but who have been partners and owners since 1921 in the largest cotton mill in Europe. Księży Młyn (or Priest's Mill) was a model industrial village with production facilities, shops, a fire department, hospital, school, railway station, residential quarters for the workers, and the owner's palace surrounded by a park. Today, it serves an interesting mix of new functions: offering luxury suites in the former factory building, a museum in the palace, and poorer housing mixed with artists' studios and galleries in the workers' quarters, where the "gentrification" progresses more slowly.

The palace (Rezydencja Księży Młyn)—called the Herbst Villa or Rezydencja Księży Młyn—under the management of Museum Sztuki, is now open to visitors, who can marvel at the fabulous and expensive taste of the early capitalists. It was home to Edward Herbst, Karol Scheibler's son in law, who lived here with his wife Matylda. In former stables, there is a small but excellent gallery of 19th- and early 20th-century Polish paintings. The palatial villa stands in a lovely, well-kept park, where you can enjoy a cup of tea or a glass of wine; on a cold day, drinks and snacks can be had under the roof, in the winter garden.

EC1 was the oldest power plant in Łódź, operational from 1907 to 2001. Since it closed down, this postindustrial area in the very center of town has received a second life, and it will continue changing and developing for another decade or so. In 2016, the brand-new planetarium opened its doors in one of the buildings, which looks like a group of space rockets ready to be launched. The Planetarium is just one part of a larger redevelopment project for the area.