Forst — Forst Map Poster

המפה

Forst Map Poster

Forst sits in Lower Lusatia on the west bank of the Lusatian Neisse. From above the river is the town's most defined edge: it runs north to south along the eastern side, and across the water lies Poland. The streets fan out westward from the river in a loose, uneven layout. That layout owes more to a century of industrial growth than to any one plan, and the river keeps the whole map oriented.

For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Forst was a centre of cloth production, known then as a German Manchester. The mills needed rail sidings, long factory plots and workers' housing close by, and that industrial past still shows in the size of the blocks. Some districts have large, regular parcels. Others are tighter, where terraced housing filled the space between works.

The town's best-known green space is the East German Rose Garden, laid out near the river in the early twentieth century and still one of the larger rose gardens in the country. On a Forst map poster it appears as a patch of curving paths set against the straighter streets around it. The eye tends to settle there, between the town's grid and the river.