Every design for Pabianice

Beside the Dwór obronny kapituły krakowskiej, the fortified manor of the Kraków cathedral chapter, the long history of Pabianice comes into focus. For centuries this was a church town owned by the chapter; Władysław I Łokietek granted it town rights, and in the sixteenth century King Sigismund II Augustus gave its craftsmen their guilds. A local legend even tells of a princess named Pabianka, said to have used an underground passage to reach the church of St Matthew unseen.

There is a quiet pride in the town that comes from all those layers. Weavers left the Dom Tkaczy and the Drewniany Dom Tkacza, factory families left villas such as the Willa Schweikerta, and the Muzeum miasta Pabianic keeps the threads together. The town also remembers harder chapters: before the Second World War a quarter of its residents were Jewish, and the German occupation struck the community and the local intelligentsia hard. St Maximilian Kolbe is the town's patron, and the house where he lived, the Dom zamieszkania św. Maksymiliana Kolbego, is part of its map.

Today it sits just south-west of Łódź, joined by a tram line. Picture tram 41 rattling past old weavers' houses towards the city on a grey morning.