Features

Poland - Nowa Huta

by Mike Levy

Though Krakow is hardly a Cinderella, its near neighbour Nowa Huta is certainly an ugly sister. But a fascinating one. What is, in effect, a suburb of the Polish city, Nowa Huta is fascinating for lovers of Soviet kitsch, a hymn of praise to Stalinist socialist realism. A short tram ride from the centre of Krakow will take you to the Nowa Huta quarter which was developed in the 1950s as an industrial township to serve the gigantic metal works complex created, as with so many things in Communist times, by decree of the great dictator.

The town was designed as a ‘gift’ from Mother Russia to a ‘grateful’ (and then servile) Polish people. The first stop in a half-day exploration of this fascinating district should be the massive steel works building now owned by Mittal. Known locally as “The Doge’s Palace”, this great palace of industry is Stalinist grandiosity writ as large as they get. Spread over 1000 hectares, the whole complex is a maze of hundreds of buildings, railway tracks and pipelines – a breathtaking industrial landscape.

They say that some of the factory’s halls are larger than Krakow’s massive central square; the interiors are wonderfully preserved examples of 1950s design. If you have time, take a look at Nowa Huta’s housing estates – built as living examples of the ‘socialist paradise’ – each estate operating as an almost autonomous town with its own infrastructure of social services. Like a Victorian factory town in Britain, the aim was to keep the workers and their families on site - and not to stray into the fleshpots of Krakow.

If you are interested in Soviet planning – or would like to be – Nowa Huta makes for a fascinating afternoon trip into a kind of reality from the fairy-tale romanticism of central Krakow.