Places of Interest - Poland

The old town:

The heart of Krakow is the Rynek Główny which is one of the largest and most beautiful market squares in Europe. On the edge of the market square is the St. Mary's Church, which is one of the main urban features. On the square there are various buildings in different styles: the Town Hall Tower (Ratusz), the Cloth Hall and the Church of St. Adalbert. Another city symbol is the Wawel hill; the hill has a height of 228 m and is located on the bank of the Wisła, at the southwest point of the center. There are also numerous historic buildings on this hill. Most important are the Wawel Cathedral and the Wawel Castle - a place of Polish tradition. At the foot of the hill is the Dragon Cave situated. Planty is a city park that has been built around the old city. In the northern part of it there are still the Barbakan and the Florianus Gate and you can see parts of the city wall.

Kazimierz, Podgorez and Plaszow

Apart from Roman Catholics, Krakow is also an important city for Jews: especially from the Thirty Years War they came to live in large numbers in former Kroke, mainly in the Kazimierz district. While many people think that this is the Jewish ghetto that is so clearly visible in "Spielbergs" "Schindler's list" will be disappointed. When the Nazis occupied Krakow, a new Jewish quarter was used as a ghetto; "Podogrez" a bit further south in the city. When the Krakow ghetto was evacuated in 1943, it was destroyed and the remaining Jews were deported to the still more southerly concentration camp "Plaszow": most of the 70,000 Jews who lived in Krakow before World War II did not survive the Holocaust. Currently only 180 Jews live in Krakow. You can still visit the old camp house, but also the path made with Jewish graves to the quarry. On the grounds of the former concentration camp a park with numerous monuments can be visited. Finally you can visit the old e-maille factory of Oskar Schindler in which the Czech had hundreds of Jews working who became so "indispensable" for the German warindustry and this way survived the war. It is now a museum (see below).

"Wieliczka" salt mine

The salt mine which stands on the UNESCO World Heritage List is just outside Krakow and has contributed a lot to the prosperity of the city. It has done 700 years of service and can now be visited as part of a tour (museum). It is a labyrinth of tunnels that spread over nine floors in more than 300 km of tunnel. The deepest is 327 meters below the ground. In a tour through the mine in which you are brought down to a "real" mine shaft, you going to experience a magical underground world with rooms, chapels and holes all minced from the salt.

Krakow originated around a natural hill, the Wawel. The first writings date back to the 9th century but somewhere in the 7th century it was already a branch. The city developed at some crossroads of old trade routes: the Amber route from the Baltic Sea to Rome, and the route from Byzantium to Neurenberg in the 11th century. A castle was built on the Wawel, where Polish kings resided for five centuries. In 1241 the city was destroyed to the last stone by invading Tartars but it rose again and a century later, Casimir the Great, who founded the still existing university in 1364, built the oldest in Central Europe after that of Prague. Krakow was a market place in a royal residence and was for the time being populated with foreigners, in this case from the German Empire. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the bourgeoisie was mainly German by origin. It was only in the course of the centuries that the nobility resisted and Poland was granted citizens' rights, which in the course of time took over. The German administrative language of the city council and the guilds was gradually replaced in the 15th century by the Polish and In the 16th century, Krakow would also become a Polish city culturally and the nobility took its place alongside the bourgeoisie. The urban patriciate continued to speak German until the 16th century, partly because of the indispensable trade relations to the cities in the German Reich. It flourished in these centuries and was included as "Hanze City" and Copernicus studied here. 

In 1596 Warchau became the new capital although state funerals and tributes still took place in Krakow. The Swedish attacks would herald the decline of the city; Cracow was taken by Austria at the Third Polish Division (1795), but was conquered by Napoleon in 1809 and annexed to the Duchy of Warsaw set by him. This duchy was dismantled after the fall of Napoleon and granted to Russia (Congress-Poland) and Prussia (Posen) at the Congress of Vienna. Since they did not agree on Krakow, they declared this city and the surrounding areas a free, independent and strictly neutral city. This Republic of Krakow was annexed in 1846 by Austria again. The city got a lot of freedom from the occupiers and it was not surprising that here the Polish national feelings first rose in 1890. After the First World War in 1919 the city became Polish again. When WWII broke out, some 65,000 Jews lived in the city. During World War II, Krakow was the capital of the Nazi German General Government and Hans Frank lived in the "Wawel". Despite the fact that the inhabitants of the city were tackled hard, Krakow was spared from major bombing or artillery bombardments. When the communists after the war took power, the construction of a new factory was started immediately outside the city and a new city district. This is because of the traditional values and religious background of the city that did not stand with the new communism that was introduced. Now Krakow is most of all a big tourist attraction and is visited by millions of people – national and international.