Wrocławski Manhattan — Wroclaw's Manhattan — is a cluster of tall residential tower blocks built in the 1970s on Świdnicka Street, one of the city's main thoroughfares. The nickname was given by locals who saw in the cluster of towers rising above the low historic fabric of the city a skyline that suggested, at least in silhouette, the towers of New York. The irony was not lost on the residents of a city in communist Poland: this was their Manhattan, built in prefabricated concrete panels under a system that officially regarded capitalism as the enemy.
The towers are a product of Wroclaw's postwar housing expansion — the same process of mass residential construction that filled cities across the communist bloc with panel housing from the 1960s onward. What distinguishes the Wroclaw Manhattan from typical panel housing estates is its location: instead of being placed in a peripheral new district, the towers were inserted into the historic centre, creating a juxtaposition of eras and scales that remains one of the most striking urban moments in the city. The towers have been partially renovated since 1989 but retain their essential character: a communist-era skyline that the city has made its own.