This tour of the historic Old Town, including a good look round all the museums, will take a whole day with a stop for coffee, then lunch.
1. Starting in the Rynek Glowny, the main square and one of the most expansive and attractive city plazas in Europe, you’ll find the Sukiennice, the medieval cloth-hall. Reputed to be the oldest department store in the world, it’s still doing a roaring trade today in its central gallery, as dark and busy as a Middle Eastern bazaar, where vendors now sell hand-crafted Polish souvenirs to thronging tourists. Upstairs is an art gallery. How long you spend here depends on how much nineteeth century romanticism you can stomach: heroic battles and idyllic pastoral scenes form the basis of the collection, and the principal painter represented is Jan Matejko (1838-1893), famed throughout Poland for his lush, romantic depiction of triumphal scenes from Polish history painted on gigantic canvases.
2. Next stop is the city’s most famous church, St. Mary’s. Easily the most visited feature of St. Mary’s is the Grand Altar, a pentaptych, sculpted by the German, Veit Stoss, it is reckoned to be one of the finest pieces of late Gothic art in Europe. 200 figures are depicted, ranging between 3cm and 3m high. Every vein and muscle was portrayed carefully by Stoss, but sadly this goes unappreciated as it’s impossible to get up close enough. The altar was unveiled and consecrated on 25th July 1489. Another much visited feature is the replica of the famous Black Madonna of Czestochowa icon, the original of which can be seen in Czestochowa in the Jasna Gora Monastery. some 100 miles north-west of Krakow, which is one of the most important sites of Catholic pilgrimage in the world. But what captivates most visitors to St. Mary’s is the overall decoration of the church interior, and the hourly bugle call – the hejnal Mariacki – from the taller of church’s spires.
3. Now we leave the Rynek Glowny to go up Florianska, one of the main shopping streets (but just before you do this, glance back over the square and note that it’s virtually traffic-free – a lesson for urban planners in western cities perhaps). One block up on the left of Florianska is the elegant Pod Roza Hotel. Note the Latin inscription above its 16th century portal, which reads “Let this house survive until an ant drinks the whole of the seas and a tortoise walks all around the world.” Time for a coffee, I think, and just around the corner you’re spoilt for choice. Walk down Tomasza with the hotel on your right, and in seconds you’ll come to a delightful ‘courtyard’ formed by an s-bend in the street. Here you’ll find the very popular cafes, Camelot, Cherubino and Dym, with their clusters of tables and chairs on the street in the summer. After coffee, backtrack to Florianska and turn left to continue the tour. On the right at No. 23 is the Pharmacy Museum, housing a collection of ancient medical paraphernalia which is worth a quick visit. A few doors on you’ll find the Jan Matejko Museum, set up in the house where the artist lived and worked, and preserved more or less the same as it was at Matejko’s death in 1893, so you get a good idea of how prominent Cracovians lived during the nineteenth century. Back into Florianska, looming ahead of you is the Florianska Gate, one of the original medieval gateways into the city.
4. Turn left before the gate into Pijarska, with its restored old city walls, and you’ll find they now house a gallery of some really kitsch paintings, tempting only for their awfulness. Beyond these you’ll pass under Cracow’s very own version of the Bridge of Sighs which links two parts of the Czartoryski Museum, one of the finest museums in Cracow. Turn left here to find the entrance. The collection is amazing; you’ll find everything from Egyptian mummies, to paintings by Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci, Turkish plunder from the siege of Vienna in 1683, even Chopin’s death-mask. It’s well worth a visit.
5. Now continue along Pijarska with its hulking baroque Piarist Church on the right and the smart, well-located Francuski Hotel on the left. This will lead you to Slawkowska Street and lunch-time I think. If your stomach is empty and your wallet is full, your could do no better than Cyrano de Bergerac, a superb French restaurant in the beautifully restored basement of No. 26. Or if a quick snack is preferable, try Bodega Marqués, a winebar with a superb choice of Spanish wines and tapas, further down at No. 12.
6. A stroll through the park is next, so go back up Slawkowska until you reach the Planty, the ring of greenery surrounding the Old Town and turn right into this. With its fountains, lakes and refreshment stalls, it’s a cool haven in summer, and a shady retreat from nearby bustling streets such as Florianska. Stroll past the Barbican, built in the 15th century as part of the city’s defences. The upstairs gallery has windows from which boiling tar or stones could be directed at attackers. Formerly connected to the Florianska Gate by means of a drawbridge which crossed a moat, restoration work is now being conducted to re-create this. Continue on through the Planty to the ochre-hued Slowacki Theatre on the right. Modelled on the Paris Opera, it was built in 1893 and is named after the Romantic playwright, Julius Slowacki. Note the facade on plac sw. Ducha with its figures representing poetry, drama, comedy, song, dance, joy and sadness. Part of the summer opera and operetta festival take place here, as well as occasional classical concerts and recitals. Now continue down Szpitalna street, parallel with Florianska but a world away from it in character. Most of the buildings which line the street are nineteenth century mansions. Walk into the foyer of the Pollera Hotel and admire the stained glass transom window by Stanislaw Wyspianski, whose work we will see much more of later in the tour. At No. 24 is the city’s Orthodox Church, in a building which was a synagogue until 1939. The church occupies the upstairs floor of what looks like an ordinary house, and is known for its interior design by the artist, Jerzy Nowosielski. Continue on by the elegant Elektor Hotel to the end of the street.
7. It opens out into Maly Rynek, a quiet square overlooked by the towers of St. Mary’s. It’s not a particularly attractive place, but the unpressurised pace of things here makes a stop at one of the cafes or restaurants on the left-hand side of the square worthwhile. If you missed lunch earlier, try Casa della Pizza, but first check out the tiny shop on the right-hand corner, much visited by nuns, which sells all manner of religious vestments and other religious paraphernalia. Here is the place to buy a priest’s robes or a devotional painting of the Virgin Mary. It also has a wide selection of devotional candles, and incongruously, toiletry supplies!
8. Now head for the bottom right of the square and cross over into Stolarska Street, past the American, German and French consulates. Opposite these is great poster shop with a good selection of Polish graphics posters, rightly acclaimed as world leaders in this art form. At the end of the street on the left is the hulking mass of the Dominican Church and monastery, topped with a myriad of pinnacles. For many centuries the Dominican order was associated with a rather fearsome reputation, basking proudly in the nickname given to it by monks and other orders – domini canes – or “the dogs of the Lord”. Dominicans formulated the Spanish Inquisition and later became the intellectual elite of the church. In the 1980s the order in Cracow was associated with student protest, and became a focal point for an orthodox Catholic revival which antagonised the communist authorities.
9. We’re now on the last leg of our tour. Turn right out of Stolarska and head up Dominikanska, crossing over the busy intersection with Grodzka street. Across the square you can see the Gothic Franciscan Church. Facing the Dominican Church, these two orders have competed for over seven centuries to gain influence in Cracow. Though a gloomier and more sombre affair than the Dominican house of worship, what makes the Dominican Church outstanding is its interior decoration by the Cracow artist, Stanislaw Wyspianski, who is commemorated on a plaque to the left of the side entrance into the church. Inside there’s an aura of mysticism about the place, augmented by the heavy presence of incense and by the polychrome murals and stained glass which date from 1900 when Wyspianski was commissioned by the Franciscans to decorate the newly reconstructed church, following a fire which devasted not only the church, but most of the surrounding area. The most spectacular Wyspianski stained glass window is above the main entrance to the church. Entitled ‘God the Father Creating the World’, it is a whirling, misty but intensely beautiful and vivid array of abstract colours. You can also see another of his works in the window behind the altar: St Francis is depicted with the Blessed Salomea and representations of the four elements, earth, air, fire and water. Across the road from the church is the palace of the archbishops of Cracow, occupied from 1964 to 1978 by Karol Wojtyla – now Pope John Paull II. When he visits his beloved Cracow, he still stays here and you can see the balcony from which he conducts his traditional evening talk to Cracovian students on each of his visits.
This ends our tour. From here it’s easy to get back to the Rynek Glowny. Backtrack and take a left up Bracka or the busier Grodzka, which like Florianska are lined with restaurants and shops.
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