Nowa Huta
The new town, which was founded in the 1950s east of Krakow, combines the key features of ideal city and garden city.
Still surprising in its monumentality and unusual symmetry, Nowa Huta is the most interesting and most complete implementation of architects' plans of the era of socialist realism. The new town, which was founded in the 1950s east of Krakow, combines the key features of ideal city and garden city. In 2004, Nowa Huta was listed in the register of monuments of Krakow as a representative example of urban socialist realism in Poland.
It is worth seeing the first church built in Nowa Huta – the famous Ark of the Lord – with a roof that resembles not only the ark, but recalls the chapel in Ronchamp by Le Corbusier. The memory of the years 1944-1989 is recalled by the PRL Museum, which regularly hosts temporary exhibitions, and in preparation is a permanent state-of-the-art multimedia exhibition.
In the Polish Aviators' Park, meanwhile, at the former Rakowice-Czyżyny military airport, you can see the collections of the Polish Aviation Museum –unique aircraft, helicopters, gliders and aircraft engines. For many years they were exhibited in old hangars and outdoors. In 2010 a new main museum building was opened – from above, the building resembles an aircraft propeller.