Łódź holds the world's second-oldest museum of modern art, gave Polish cinema its film school, and hangs murals on a hundred firewalls. Three days here move between constructivist galleries, textile barons' palaces and the mill town of Księży Młyn.
The world's second-oldest museum of modern art, founded in 1931 around the a.r. group collection assembled by Strzemiński, Kobro and Stażewski. Open Tue–Sun 11:00–19:00; the Neoplastic Room is rebuilt to Strzemiński's 1948 plans.
Joanna Rajkowska's 2014 courtyard work: every wall of a tenement yard clad in hand-cut mirror shards, made for her daughter Róża after eye surgery. Open around the clock, no ticket, reached through the archway off Piotrkowska.
Gustaw Landau-Gutenteger's 1903 art nouveau villa for the textile manufacturer Leopold Kindermann, with apple-tree ironwork, original stained glass and a sculpted facade, now the city gallery's room for contemporary Polish painting and print.
Since 2011 the Urban Forms Foundation has commissioned over 100 large-format murals on blank Łódź firewalls, with work by Etam Cru, Aryz, Os Gemeos and Shida. The densest cluster sits between Roosevelta, Traugutta and Włókiennicza.
Izrael Poznański's neo-baroque palace, nicknamed the Łódź Louvre, keeps its mirrored ballroom and dining room intact and devotes wings to Artur Rubinstein, Julian Tuwim and Władysław Reymont. Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00.
Poland's second-largest opera house: a 1,300-seat modernist block finished in 1967, its stage tower squaring off the whole plac Dąbrowskiego. The box office at the north entrance opens 12:00–19:00 and releases same-day returns.
Set in Karol Scheibler's palace, the film museum tracks the Łódź Film School generation — Wajda, Polański, Kieślowski — through cameras, posters, a working optical-toy collection and Se-ma-for's Oscar-winning puppet sets.
The Rubinstein Philharmonic plays Friday symphonic programmes in a 648-seat hall rebuilt in 2004, with a resident orchestra strong on Lutosławski, Panufnik and Polish premieres alongside the standard repertoire.
Matylda and Edward Herbst's 1875 villa on the edge of Księży Młyn, restored with its winter garden and ballroom, houses Muzeum Sztuki's old masters and Polish 19th-century painting. Tue–Sun, last entry an hour before closing.
Karol Scheibler's self-contained mill town of the 1870s: parallel rows of red-brick famuły workers' housing with a school, shop, fire station and hospital, now half-gentrified with design studios in the ground-floor units.
A 19th-century weaving mill converted in 2012 into studios for some 30 creative businesses, plus a gallery and Teatr Chorea's black-box stage. Chorea's physical music-theatre plays most weekends in the old boiler hall.
The 1902 state vodka monopoly distillery reopened in 2019 as a courtyard of restaurants with a museum of the plant's history and Teatr Mały's stage; the boiler-house brickwork and cast-iron stairs were kept in place.