Nowa Huta
Just as I’m wondering how I’m going to
recognise Klaudia, an ancient green car
sputters to a halt in front of me, its engine
not so much purring as yowling. It’s a 1972
Trabant, a GDR brand that was popular
across the Eastern Bloc. And my guide
is driving it for a reason: we’re of to the
‘workers’ paradise’ of Nowa Huta.
Krakow’s easternmost district, Nowa
Huta was built between 1949 and 1951 to
house employees of the steelworks at its
heart. It’s one of only two planned cities in
the world built in the socialist realist style,
the signature Soviet aesthetic that was all
about big, blustering buildings and banging
the drum for communism. “The city was a
git from Stalin,” Klaudia says. “Showing of,
really.” Paranoia meant 250 bomb shelters
were built under Nowa Huta, some of which
are now open for tours.
We rattle through the ‘new’ part of town
(built between the 1970s and 1990s), passing
the Polish Aviation Museum, a former
airield, and Nowohuckie Centrum Kultury, a
cultural centre, outside which are street food
trucks and a live band.
The city was intended to be laid out in
the shape of a wheel, with Plac Centralny
at its heart, but only half the spokes ever
materialised. One of those spokes, Aleja Róż,
which Klaudia calls “our Champs-Élysées”, is a
wide, partly pedestrianised street punctuated
by tidy lawns and lanked by domineering,
Orwellian apartment blocks, built for the staf
of the steelworks. “Everybody was equal, but
some more equal than others,” my guide quips,
pointing to the lats with balconies.
The buildings’ ground loors are given
over to grand colonnades, and shops and
restaurants that hark back to Nowa Huta’s
heyday, from the Bar Mleczny Centralny
(a milk bar barely changed since the early
1950s) to Cepelix, a git shop with vintage
chandeliers and wooden display cabinets.
Amid the net curtains and laminate
furniture of Restauracja Stylowa — once
popular with Communist Party oicials
— Klaudia buys me a cherry vodka, urging
me to “drink it Polish-style, in one shot”. It’s
not all communist throwbacks, though. On
either side of the road are branches of hip
local ice cream chain Good Lood, both with
queues of teenagers outside.
Aleja Róż was also once home to the world’s
largest Lenin statue, and while that went the
way of the communist regime, the steelworks
once named ater him still stands. Today, it
employs 3,500, a fraction of its peak workforce
of 40,000. At the entrance are two fortress-like
administration buildings, one for the workers
and one for management. While both brim
with original features, the managers’ building,
with its marble staircases and chandeliers, is
the more impressive. Some truly were more
equal than others.MORE INFO
Polish National Tourism Ofice.
poland.travel
Crazy Guides (Trabant tours).
crazyguides.com
Stara Zajezdnia. starazajezdniakrakow.pl
Nova. novarestobar.pl
Mleczarnia. mle.pl
Mehoffer Garden. mnk.pl
Galicia Jewish Museum.
galiciajewishmuseum.or
Ariel. ariel-krakow.pl
Ester. restauracjaester.pl
Apteka Pod Orłemem.
muzeumkrakowa.pl
Schindler’s Factory. mnk.pl
Forum Przestrzenie.
forumprzestrzenie.com
Cepelix. facebook.com/cepelix
Restauracja Stylowa. stylowa-krakow.pl
Good Lood. goodlood.com
Wawel Castle. wawel.krakow.pl
Tytano. tytano.org
Cukiernia Michałek.
facebook.com/cukierniamichalekWizzair lies to Krakow from Luton,
Birmingham and Doncaster Shefield.
wizzair.com
Puro Krakow Kazimierz has double
rooms from 222 Polish zlotys (£47),
room only. purohotel.pl IMAGE: ALAMYCentral Square, Nowa Huta
70 nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel
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