There are places in Łódź where the name seems to tell you something about the place before you even know its history.
Sielanka is one of them.
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| Sielanka Park in Łódź |
It is a small park, tucked away between Pabianicka Street, Cieszkowskiego Street and Jana Pawła II Avenue. There are trees, two ponds, paths, a playground and plenty of everyday city life around it.
Nothing here feels grand.
But once you start looking into its past, the park becomes much more interesting.
Because this was once a place where people came to relax, spend time outdoors, listen to music, go fishing and enjoy the greenery away from the noise of the growing industrial city.
And nearby stood the villas of one of Łódź's industrial families.
A garden called Sielanka
The history of the area goes back to the end of the 19th century.
One part of the story is connected with Edmund Behm, the owner of a nearby brickworks. He created a recreational garden known as Sielanka, with ponds and places where people could spend their free time.
There was even a theatre and dance hall, and one of the ponds had a landing place for boats.
It is quite difficult to picture that when you stand in the park today.
The area now feels very ordinary. People walk their dogs, children play and residents pass through on their way somewhere else.
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
A little escape from the industrial city.
Perhaps that is where the name Sielanka really comes alive.
The Königs and their world
Another important part of the story belongs to the König family.
Ferdinand König was one of the industrialists who helped shape this part of Łódź. His business interests included textile production as well as finishing and dyeing works and a brickworks.
Like many wealthy industrialists of Łódź, he did not simply have a factory.
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
There was an entire world around it.
A house.
A garden.
Workers.
Industrial buildings.
And the infrastructure needed to keep everything running.
The villa at Pabianicka 49 was part of that world.
Today it is easy to overlook the significance of such buildings. They can appear simply as old villas standing beside a busy road.
But at the end of the 19th century, a villa like this represented something very different.
It was the home of a man whose wealth was closely connected with the rapid industrial growth of Łódź.
A glimpse of old Pabianicka Street
One of the things I find fascinating about Sielanka is that we actually have old photographs showing what this part of Łódź looked like.
There is a photograph from around 1899–1900 showing Pabianicka Street, with Ferdinand König's villa visible on the left.
The road looks completely different from the busy street we know today.
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
There are no modern blocks, no enormous traffic and none of the visual noise of contemporary Łódź.
Instead, you can see the old villa and the developing city around it.
Photographs like this make the history much easier to understand.
You stop thinking about dates and names and start imagining the actual street.
People walking along it.
Trams beginning to appear.
Industrial buildings growing around the old houses.
And a city expanding rapidly towards the south.
The park was not always quiet
The old Sielanka garden was used for leisure and entertainment, and historical newspapers mention events taking place here.
One surviving announcement from 1937, for example, advertised a fishing competition at Sielanka on Pabianicka Street.
I really like details like this because they make the history feel much more human.
A fishing competition sounds almost ridiculously ordinary.
And yet, that is exactly the point.
People living in Łódź before the war weren't simply factory workers and industrialists appearing in history books.
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
They went fishing.
They met friends.
They listened to music.
They went dancing.
They took their children somewhere green on a Sunday.
They were simply living their lives.
And Sielanka was one of those places where they could do it.
The ponds are still here
Today, two shallow ponds remain in the park.
They are much quieter than the ponds of the old recreational garden must have been, but they are an important reminder of the landscape that existed here before the modern city surrounded it.
This is one of those things I enjoy about exploring Łódź.
Sometimes the landscape itself survives even when almost everything around it changes.
A road becomes wider.
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
A factory disappears.
A villa gets a new function.
New blocks appear.
But a pond remains.
And suddenly you have a physical connection with a completely different Łódź.
What happened to the villas?
The König family left behind several buildings in this part of the city.
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
The villa at Pabianicka 49 is particularly interesting because of its connection with the old park landscape.
There was also another König villa at Pabianicka 55, built in the early 20th century for a member of the family.
These houses remind us that the industrial city was not made entirely of factories and workers' housing.
The industrialists who built Łódź also created private worlds for themselves.
Their villas often stood close to their businesses, surrounded by gardens and carefully planned greenery.
Sielanka was part of that landscape.
From industrial outskirts to modern Łódź
What I find most interesting about this area is how much it has changed.
At the end of the 19th century, this part of Łódź was still developing rapidly. Pabianicka Street was becoming increasingly important, industry was expanding and the city was spreading further away from its historic centre.
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
Today, the same area is surrounded by modern roads, blocks of flats, shops and traffic.
It is difficult to see the old boundary between the city and the countryside.
But the park gives you a small glimpse of what was here before.
A garden.
Ponds.
Villas.
Factories.
People looking for somewhere to relax.
It feels like a little surviving fragment of a much larger landscape.
Why I like Sielanka Park
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Sielanka isn't one of those places in Łódź that immediately overwhelms you.
There is no enormous palace, no spectacular factory complex and no famous monument that everyone comes to photograph.
Instead, it is the kind of place you begin to appreciate once you know its story.
You can sit beside the pond and think about the people who came here more than a hundred years ago.
You can look towards Pabianicka Street and try to imagine the old villa that once stood in a very different landscape.
And you can remember that this part of Łódź was once full of industrial ambition, private gardens and places created simply so people could enjoy themselves.
That is probably why the name Sielanka still feels appropriate.
The park is smaller now.
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
The old villas have lost their original surroundings.
The factories have disappeared or changed their purpose.
The city has grown enormously around them.
But there is still something peaceful here.
A few trees.
A couple of ponds.
A quiet path.
And a name that has survived for more than a century.
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
Sielanka.
A little piece of the old Łódź that somehow managed to remain green.
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
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| Sony A7sII, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8 |
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