Nowa Huta (literally The New Steel Mill) - is the easternmost district of Kraków. With more than 200,000 inhabitants it is one of the most populous areas of the city.

Following the establishing of the People's Republic of Poland, the Communist authorities had encountered substantial resistance to their regime from middle-class Cracovians. A referendum held by the authorities was soundly defeated by the people of Kraków - a major cause of embarrassment for the Government. To "correct the class imbalance", the authorities commenced building a satellite industrial town to attract people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to the region, such as peasants and the working class.

Nowa Huta was started in 1949 as a separate town near Kraków on terrain resumed by the Communist Government from former villages of Mogiła, Pleszów and Krzesławice. It was planned as a huge centre of heavy industry. The town was to become an ideal town for the communist propaganda and populated mostly by industrial workers. In 1951 it was joined with Kraków as its new district and the following year tramway communication was started.

On July 22, 1954 the Lenin Steel Works were opened and in less than 20 years the factory became the biggest steel mill in Poland. In the 1960s the city grew rapidly. The monumental architecture of the Central Square (Plac Centralny) was surrounded by huge blocks of flats. In the 1970s the steel production reached 7 millions tonnes of steel yearly. At the same time the biggest tobacco factory in Poland was opened there and a huge cement factory.

The reasons for building such an industrial town near Kraków were mostly ideological and were against laws of economy (both the coal and iron ore had to be transported from Silesia, and the products were shipped to other parts of Poland since local demand was relatively small). This became visible in the 1980s, when the economical crisis halted the city's growth. However, the remaining industry is a constant threat both to historical monuments of the Kraków old town and to city's inhabitants.

Currently this monumental socrealist centre is considered a monument of architecture.

One type of building lacking from the urban design of Nowa Huta was a church. A campaign to establish one grew after the election of the Polish cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II and the subsequent rise of Solidarity, which made this issue a significant focus of its activities. As a result of such campaign, the town was brought to world attention.

Since the fall of Communism the city that was once a showpiece for Stalinism now boasts many tributes to ardent anti-communists. Streets formerly named after Lenin and the Cuban Revolution have been renamed to honor Pope John Paul II and exile leader Władysław Anders. In 2004 Plac Centralny, Nowa Huta's central square which once was home to a giant statue of Lenin, was renamed Ronald Reagan Square (Plac Reagana) in honor of the former U.S. President

[Source: Wikipedia]

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