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Raised from scratch in the late 1940s on the site of an old village, the vast industrial complex of Nowa Huta now has a population of over 200,000, making it by far the biggest suburb, while the vast steelworks accounts for more than fifty percent of the country's production. One of the epicentres of Solidarity-era opposition activity and all-round resistance to communist rule, it's worth visiting for the insights it offers into the working-class culture of postwar Poland as well as the immense ecological problems facing parts of the country. Indeed, there's good reason for saying that you haven't done justice to the city until the smokestacks and decaying housing estates of Nowa Huta figure alongside the historic treasures of the Stare Miasto in your impressions of the place. From Krakow city centre, it's a forty-minute tram journey (#4, #9, #15 or #22) to plac Centralny , a typically grey, monumental slab of Socialist Realist architecture, now bereft of its statue of Lenin, which was replaced in 1990 by a small replica of the Gdansk Crosses. From here, seemingly endless streets of residential blocks stretch out in all directions - a bigger contrast with the medieval city centre would be hard to imagine. East along the main road, al. Jana Pawla II, are the mills known for decades as the Lenin Steelworks , since renamed the Sendzimir Works, and still employing upwards of 10,000 people. The complex faced an uncertain future in the immediate post-communist period, due both to its role as a major environmental polluter, and its greedy reliance on government subsidues to remain in business. Such is Nowa Huta's importance as an employer, however, that it would be political suicide for any Polish government to allow it to go under. For the time being, restructuring, and the securing of foreign loans (loans more often than not guaranteed by jittery Polish governments), have helped turn Nowa Huta into one of the more profitable steelworks in Poland - but further investment in new machinery will be needed if it is to retain this position into the future. On the pollution front, significant reductions in the steelworks' hazardous emission levels have been achieved through decreased production combined with the introduction of new smoke filters on the main chimneys. In keeping with the antireligious policies of the postwar government, churches were not included in the original construction plans for Nowa Huta. After years of intensive lobbying, however, the ardently Catholic population eventually got permission to build one in the 1970s. The Arka (the colloquial name for Kosciol NMP, or Church of Our Lady) in the northern Bienczyce district, is the result - an amazing ark-like concrete structure encrusted with mountain pebbles. Go there any Sunday and you'll find it packed with steelworkers and their families decked out in their best, a powerful testament to the seemingly unbreakable Catholicism of the Polish working class. To get there, take tram #5 from Krakow train station to al. Kocmyrzowska, then walk north up ul. Obroncow Krzyza. The other local church, the large Kosciol sw. Maximiliana Kolbego (Maximilian Kolbe Church) in the Mistrzejowice district, was consecrated by Pope John Paul II in 1983, a sign of the importance the Catholic hierarchy attaches to the loyalty of Nowa Huta. Kolbe, canonized in 1982, was a priest sent to Auschwitz for giving refuge to Jews; in the camp, he took the place of a Jewish inmate in the gas chambers. Trams #1, #16 and #20 from plac Centralny all pass by the building. In total contrast to these recent constructions, a mile east of plac Centralny off al. Jana Pawla II stands the Cistercian monastery of Mogila , a world away from the bustle of Nowa Huta. Bus #153 passes right by. Built around 1260 on the regular Cistercian plan of a triple-aisled basilica with series of chapels in the transepts, the Abbey Church, one of the finest examples of Early Gothic in the region, is a tranquil, meditative spot, the airy interior graced with a fine series of Renaissance murals. What you won't find any longer is the late-medieval paper mill built by the Order on the banks of the nearby River Dlubnia, which exported its products all the way into Russia. Across the road is the Church of St Bartholomew, one of the oldest wooden churches in the country, with an elaborately carved doorway from 1466 and a Baroque belfry.
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