It was Palm Sunday when I visited Kraków, an important day for Catholics in Poland, and the weather was fine to boot, so the town was rather crowded, not only with - mostly Polish - tourists, but with pretty much all inhabitants of the city and surroundings. Many women and children were carrying bouquets made of evergreen and spring flowers. The festive atmosphere was a nice addition to my visit.
Since there were services and prayers going on all day, I didn't have a chance to seen any of the churches from the inside, but I didn't mind ‒ I got plenty of church photos in my collection. There was much else to see, after all. So let me give you a virtual walk through Krakow’s Old Town, the Stare Miasto.
The two defining features of the old town are the Wawel Castle and the Rynek Głowny, the Great Market with the Cloth Merchants’ Hall. A main street (today Ulica Grodska and Ulica Flórianska) runs all the way from the castle at the Vistula across the market and to the Florian’s Gate. Royal progressions once took that way from the gate to the castle, like they did in Gdańsk.
Kraków has been the centre of Poland from the time the Piast king Kazimierz I moved his seat from Gniezno to Kraków in 1038 until 1596, when King Sigismund (Zygmunt) III Vasa relocated the court to Warsaw. It is still the second largest city in Poland and the one most dear to the Polish people. The Old Town was declared an UNESCO World Heritage in 1978. Architectural styles represented in the old town include Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque.
The Wawel Castle had been the main seat of the Kings of Poland for centuries and thus has been altered and enlarged several times, now including buildings from the Gothic to the Baroque. The inner yards are open to the public, but access to the rooms is limited to 30 people per hour, so it is a bit tricky to get tickets for the tour. Since photographing is not allowed inside, I skipped the Flemish tapestries and pretty furniture.
There had been a settlement on the limestone hill at the Vistula river since prehistoric times. A Romanesque stone hall was built in the 11th century; though there may have been wooden structures predating it. The first castle and the town were destroyed during the Mongol invasion 1241, but both were rebuilt immediately. Some foundations have been discovered under newer buildings and in the outer bailey.
The upper castle, consisting of the main hall, the Wawel Church and other buildings, was expanded during the times of our friend Władysław Jagiełło, and Casimir the Great (who also built Ogrodzieniec Castle) in the Gothic style. Władysław Jagiełło added a Gothic pavillion to the main castle that came to be known as Danish Tower.
Casimir wanted a castle befitting a king that also offered space for a retinue and administrational staff. He also added buildings to the lower castle on the western part of the hill, like the Thieves' Tower and the Sandomierska Tower as part of the curtain walls. The Sandomierska Tower was the first artillery tower of the castle.
An outstanding part of the castle complex, and of great historical significance, is the 'Royal Archcathedral Basilica of St. Stanislaus and St.Wenceslaus', short Wawel Cathedral. The present building is a Gothic church dating to the 14th century, with some later additions like some Baroque chapels. The cathedral served as coronation site of Polish monarchs and is still a national sanctuary.
The Wawel did not undergo any further significant changes until the great fire in 1499. After part of the castle was destroyed, King Alexander I (1501-1506) and his brother Sigismund (1506-1548) who was married to the Italian heiress Bona Sforza, had the main hall and ajacent houses rebuilt in the Renaissance style as a complex around an inner yard. They called in architects from Germany and Italy. The entire complex was finished in the 1550ies and remains almost unaltered. The rooms were furbished with Flemish tapestries some of which survived until today.
The Wawel lost its political importance after the court was moved to Warsaw. The representative halls and chambers and the cathedral were still used for weddings and coronations, though. Fires and plundering armies caused significant damage in the 18th and 19th centuries (the worst were the Austrians who turned the castle in to barracks; they occupied the Wawel several times between 1846 and 1905). Afterwards, the Wawel has been repaired and restored, a work that is still going on.
When you leave the Wawel to make your way to the old town and the market square, you'll pass this pretty Baroque church, the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral. It is probably the first Baroque building in Poland. King Sigismund (Zygmunt) III Vasa, despite moving the government from Kraków to Warsaw, still wanted the Kraków to be a representative sight, and Baroque architecture was the latest fashion you could get at the time. The church was consecrated in 1635.
Not far from St.Peter and Paul is another church, St.Andrew. That one is the oldest surviving church in Kraków and one of the best preserved Romanesque buildings in Poland, dating to the 1090ies. It escaped the destruction of the Mongol raids in 1241, likely due to the fact that it was a fortress church with thick walls and small archery slits in the ground floor. The Baroque interior and the domes on the towers of the westwork have been added in 1639.
The town of Kraków was first mentioned in a document in 965. It already must have been a place worth holding. The town belonged to the territory of the Bohemian state until King Mieszko I incorporated Kraków into the budding Polish realm by defeating the Bohemians prior to his marriage with the Bohemian princess Dobrawa in 965. Mieszko was the first Christian ruler of Poland and by his connections to Christian Bohemia brought Poland into the sphere of western Christianity.
Kraków became the seat of the Polish kings / grand dukes in 1038. The town had turned into a centre of trade by the end of the 10th century. The setback caused by the Mongol invasion did not last long; the town was rebuilt immediately. It received the Magdeburg Law in 1257 by the grand duke Bolesław V the Chaste.
Kraków looked different than today; the Vistula river was divided into several arms and there may have been some man-made canals as well. One of those was running between the Wawel and the Market Square, adding to the defenses of both.
One of the symbols of Kraków's prosperity is the Cloth Merchants' Hall. The first hall was built by the instigation of King Casimir the Great. Among the wares traded there was fine cloth from Flanders and England which gave the hall its name. The hall basically was a row of connected stores separated by a small, roofed lane. The Gothic building was destroyed by a fire in 1555 and rebuilt in the Renaissance style, with a barrel vault and a circumferential attic with arcades. A passageway was added in the middle of the long building in 1601, to ease access. Unfortunately, it was impossible to get a photo of the entire hall due to the Easter Market in front of it.
Kraków has the second oldest university in central Europe (after Prague). It was founded by King Casimir the Great in 1364. He realised that the country needed an educated elite outside the church and obtained the permission to establish a university from Pope Urban V. The project stalled after his death, but was taken up again by Władysław Jagiełło and his wife Jadwiga. The early 15th century collegium maius with its arcaded courtyard is the oldest surviving part of the Jagiełłonian University and a fine example of late Gothic architecture on the verge to the Renaissance.
the quieter side since there was no Easter Market
The town continued to prosper under the Polish-Lithuanian Jagiełłonian dynasty; the 15th and 16th were considered Kraków's Golden Age. The town became a member of the Hanseatic League which further promoted trade. Renaissance arts and architecture bloomed, and the university attracted scholars from all over Europe.
With the death of the last Jagiełłonian king, Sigismund II, a time of elected kings, mostly of foreign origins with but vague connections to Poland, began. Not all of them were good picks. Wealth and importance of Kraków declined, furthered by an outbreak of bubonic plague.
In 1596, King Sigismund III Vasa moved the capital to Warsaw, though his interest in Baroque architecture left its traces; especially in the interior decoration of the churches but also in some buildings like St.Peter and Paul (see above).
After the Mongol invasion in 1241, the city was surrounded by defensive walls, and the next raid in 1287 successfully defeated. Over the next two hundred years, the town walls were expanded to 3 km, with 46 towers and eight gates. The part around the Florian's Gate is the only surviving piece of those curtain walls.
The Florian's Gate was built in the late 13th century, probably commissioned by the High Duke Leszek the Black in 1285. It is made of local limestone in the early Gothic style and the only gate and tower to have survived intact until today. In the Middle Ages, it was the main entrance to the town. The gate tower is 33 metres high; the Baroque helmet was added in 1660.
Not far from the Florian's Gate, outside the former town walls, is the Barbican (Barbakan) that once served as additional defense . The barbican is made of brick on a limestone foundation; built in the late Gothic style in 1498. Only three such outposts remain in Europe and the one in Kraków is the best preserved. The barbican was originally connected to the Florian's Gate by a covered bridge across the moat.
Not many people purchased a ticket for the tour of their interior of the barbican, so I had some quiet moments doing one of my favourite things: photographing Mediaeval military architechture. *grin*
The Barbican is a circular tower of four storyes, with an open interior which has a diametre of 25 metres. The walls are 3 metres thick at the base and about 0.5 metres in the upper part. The building was further protected by a moat of its own (some of it remains). The barbican has an rectangular exterior gate at the outside facing wall, the Kleparz Gate.
They town walls had become useless as defense against modern weapons, so the Austrian Emperor Franz I – Kraków belonged to Austria after the third partition of Poland in 1795 – ordered most of the town walls to be dismantled in 1810, and the moats to be filled in. The space was turned into a park which now surrounds the Old Town of Kraków. A very pretty place on a sunny April Sunday.
If you walk out of the perimetre of the old town to the Matejko Square near the Barbican, you will come across a momument celebrating the victory of the allied armies of Władysław Jagiełło of Poland and his cousin Vytautas, grand duke of Lithuania, over the host of the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg) in 1410. The memorial was unveiled in 1910. The monument was destroyed by the Germans in 1939, but recrafted after WW2.
Kraków became the headquarter of the German occupants in September 1939. The town was plundered, the Jewish population isolated in a ghetto, and the concentration camp Auschwitz set up nearby, but Kraków was not destroyed liked Gdańsk or Warsaw. Therefore it retained many of its historical buildings.
I leave you with the legendary fire breathing Wawel dragon which harried the town until a brave shoemaker killed it by feeding it sulphur, so that it exploded. Other version of the legend attribute the killing of the dragon to the mythical founder king Krakus and his sons.
Here's a post about the quarters outside the old town, Kazimierz and Podgórze (site of the Jewish ghetto and Schindler's Factory).
Very nice read. It provides very helpful information on Krakow. We are planning a little road trip across Poland this year and are doing a bit of research on where to go and what to see at the moment. And there is this detailed article on Krakow very helpful.
ReplyDeleteHi Oliver,
ReplyDeleteI hope you'll enjoy the trip through Poland. Better plan two days for Krakow - I had only one day and that's not enough, or at least very stressful to put everything in.