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Ten years ago, a visitor would have had little to do in the city, but Nowa Huta has learned to capitalise on its communist heritage. The city offers foreigners and Poles alike a snapshot of communism as it once was. "Young [Poles] nowadays have no idea what it was like," said Marchocki. Stepping into parts of Nowa Huta is like stepping into the worlds of their parents and grandparents: from the fully renovated People's Theatre with its Egyptian-inspired Socialist Realist style and bright neon sign, to the monuments to the Solidarity movement, which would bring down communism across Poland in 1989, and some 250 nuclear bunkers that lie beneath the city, relics of a time when people worried about nuclear apocalypse.

Besides its history, which can be explored at the Museum of Nowa Huta, opened in 2019 at the site of the old movie theatre, the main draw for tourists today is Nowa Huta's remaining Socialist Realist architecture. As one of only two planned and built Socialist Realist settlements in the world, besides Magnitogorsk deep in Russia's interior, Nowa Huta is something different from the bland modernism and grey brutalism usually associated with Eastern European socialism. Exemplified by the buildings on Central Square ironically renamed in Ronald Reagan's honour in 2004 the Socialist Realist style can also be seen inside Nowa Huta's few original shops. For example, the highly decorative interior of the folk-art shop Cepelix, located on the city's north-east side, designed by the top Polish interior designers of the time.

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But the jewel of Nowa Huta's Socialist Realist architecture is in the former Administrative Building of the Steelworks, whose faux Renaissance exterior and luxurious interior still display the style's ideal. Though technically closed to the public, the Promotion of Nowa Huta Foundation offers tours of the building, with Marchocki describing it as "the most iconic building in Nowa Huta." With all its pomp, it's a testament to the utopian ambitions that birthed the city ambitions that the workers themselves would challenge.

In 1980, when the country was rocked by strikes called by the Solidarity trade union, the Vladimir Lenin Steelworks of Nowa Huta would boast the largest workplace chapter of the union, with a membership rate of 97%. The Catholic church resolutely supported the union and the protests, forcing the ruling communists into the incredibly awkward position of standing in opposition to the workers they were meant to represent.

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Nowa Huta: The city that went from communism to capitalism - BBC News