THE CAVE in ŹRÓDLISKA II PARK

Lodz’s oldest park, once known as the English Garden or Walking Garden, was established in 1840 and for many years was the town’s only park. In the late 1850s, the park was divided into two parts: Źródliska I, which remained under municipal management, and Źródliska II, which was sold to Karol Scheibler and has since become the private garden of the factory owner’s family. Thanks to a project by a Berlin-based horticultural company, this part of the park received new plantings of original tree species and numerous objects of street furniture: fountains, a gazebo, a pavilion with climbing plants and a cave with an observation deck. The park has been open for public since 1947.

“The Promised Land”

directed by Andrzej Wajda, 1974

In one of the film’s scenes, a picturesque cave located in Źródliska II Park serves as the site of a lovers’ tryst. It is here that Lucy Zuckerowa (Kalina Jędrusik) informs Karol Borowiecki (Daniel Olbrychski) that she must leave for Berlin and asks her lover to accompany her on the trip. When Karol tries to find a plausible excuse, Lucy blackmails him by threatening to commit suicide.

In fact, the scene combines two locations: when we see Borowiecki approaching the cave, he is walking through the forest in Ruda Pabianicka to the cave next to the Klara villa, while the scene of the lovers’ conversation was shot in the much more spacious cave in Źródliska II Park, whose surroundings are shrouded in a dense fog.

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