The Museum of History of the City of Lodz
Muzeum Historii Miasta Łodzi
ul. Ogrodowa 15, 91-065 Łódź
Director: mgr Ryszard Czubaczyński
tel. (+48 42) 654 00 33, 654 03 32 (dyr.)
tel./fax (+48 42) 654 03 23
www.poznanskipalace.muzeum-lodz.pl

Opening hours: Closed Mondays; Open Tuesdays, Thursdays 10am-4pm; Wednesdays 2pm-6pm; Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays 10am-6pm.

The Museum of History of the City of Lodz opened in the former residence of the lodz-based manufacturer Izrael Kalmanowicz Poznanski in 1975. Poznanski and his sons built their palace at the turn of the twentieth century, when textile industry flourished, huge fortunes were amassed overnight and spectacular residences were built to testify to their owners' status and wealth. The most magnificent of the residences built at the time, the Poznanski Palace is also one of the few remaining compounds where the palace and the factory buildings represent a unity. The Palace itself is a monumental neo-Baroque edifice richly decorated with architectural and sculptural detail, its roofs topped with domes and turrets covered with tin scales. Equally splendid are the interiors, especially the ceremonial ones, including the ball room, the dining room, the card playing room and the snooker room. Decorated with stuccoes, colourful marble, paintings, gilding, mosaics and wood panelling with in-built wardrobes, cupboards and sofas, they were made to look more resplendent by vast mirrors, cut-glass chandeliers and brass sconces.

The interiors are not simply a reconstruction of the former Palace rooms. The furnishings, objects of daily use, bric-a-brac, paintings, photographs, documents and other items have been put together as an exhibition "History, Culture, Everyday Life of Lodz", presenting the life of the population of lodz from the late nineteenth century to the outbreak of World War II. Visitors will see an average kitchen, hall, washing room, mangle room, a section of a street, as well as interiors of the rich, furnished with Louis Philippe and Louis XV furniture, decorated with paintings by Leon and Samuel Hirszenberg, Maurycy Trebacz, Natan Spiegel, and containing silver tableware and porcelain dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Another part of the exhibition is devoted to the famous citizens of lodz: Izrael Poznanski and other key industrialists; Hilary Majewski, the architect and first designer of the Poznanski Palace; Wladyslaw Strzeminski, the painter of the inter-war period, and other artists of his circle; the poet Marian Piechal, born in 1904; the world-famous pianist Artur Rubinstein (nb. this is the only exhibition devoted to Rubinstein in the world); the poet and translator Karl Dedecius; and Jan Karski, the envoy of Poland's underground authorities who first alerted the West to the Holocaust. The theatre life of lodz is attractively presented in interiors imitating an actress's dressing room, while the card playing room, containing a collection of games from the second half of the nineteenth century, such as draughts, chess, dice, cards, snooker, and various kinds of record players, also shows photographic portraits of the citizens of lodz. The whole exhibition tells the story of the unique history and culture of lodz - a multinational industrial whose birth and growth was unprecedented. The contribution of lodz's nationalities to the town's culture is reflected in the title given to one of the sections of the exhibition: "The Triada of Lodz. Three Great Communities: The Poles, the Germans and the Jews". The Holocaust of the Lodz Jews during World War II is shown through the exhibition "Work is the Only Way: The lodz Ghetto 1940-1944".

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