Photo author: Paweł Szczeciński and Wikipedia

      Kraków is one of the largest and oldest cities in Poland, with a population of 800.000. Situated on the Vistula river (Polish: Wisła) in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. It was the capital of Poland from 1038 to 1596, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Kraków from 1846 to 1918, and the capital of Kraków Voivodeship from the 14th century to 1999. It is now the capital of the Lesser Poland Voivodeship.

Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish scientific, cultural and artistic life. As the former national capital with a history encompassing more than a thousand years, the city remains the spiritual heart of Poland. It is a major attraction for local and international tourists, attracting seven million visitors annually.

The Main Square - Rynek Główny

The Main Square (Rynek Główny) is the natural centre of Krakow: a stage for various minor and major events, a reference point, a meeting place, and the starting point or destination for countless walkers. Historically speaking, the Main Square began to operate in a shape and size similar to what we see today (a square with 200-metre-long sides) already in the earliest days of the Chartered City, i.e. after the granting of the Great Royal Charter in 1257. The centrally located Cloth Hall (Sukiennice) has survived to this day; the building was originally a commercial establishment for trading in cloth, and for over a century has been the main seat.

Wawel Hill

The history of the medieval Wawel is deeply intertwined with the history of the Polish lands and Polish royal dynasties during the Middle Ages. The political and dynastic tensions that led to the final ascendence of Kraków as the royal seat are complex, but for most of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Wawel was the seat of national government. As the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth formed and grew, Wawel became the seat of one of Europe's most important states. Smok Wawelski, also known as The Dragon of Wawel Hill or simply The Wawel Dragon, is a famous dragon in Polish folklore. He laired in a cave under Wawel Hill on the banks of the Vistula river. The Wawel Cathedral and Kraków's castle still stand on Wawel Hill. Each day the evil dragon would beat a path of destruction across the countryside, killing the civilians, pillaging their homes and devouring their livestock. In many versions of this story, the dragon especially enjoyed eating young girls, and could only be appeased if the townfolk would leave a young girl in front of its cave once a month. The King certainly wanted to put a stop to the dragon, but his bravest knights fell to its fiery breath. In the versions involving the sacrifice of young girls, every girl in the city was eventually sacrificed except one, the King's daughter Wanda. In desperation, the King promised his beautiful daughter's hand in marriage to anybody who could defeat the dragon. Great warriors from near and far fought  for the prize and failed. One day, a poor cobbler's apprentice named Kuba Dratewka accepted the challenge. He stuffed a lamb with sulphur and set it outside the dragon's cave. The dragon ate it and soon became incredibly thirsty. He turned to the Vistula River for relief and he drank and drank. But no amount of water could quell his aching stomach, and after swelling up from drinking half of the Vistula river, he exploded. Dratewka married the King's daughter as promised and they lived happily ever after.

Nowa Huta
Nowa Huta – a huge industrial complex and steelworks – is a symbol of industrial Poland and resistance to communist rule. According to a project, Nowa Huta was intended to be the first real Socialist town. In order to achieve it, 1000s of workers were brought in from small towns and the countryside in the 50s. For those people, helping to build that communist dream was a chance of social advance. The doctrine of socialist realism in Poland, as in other countries of the People's Republics, was enforced from 1949 to 1956. It involved all domains of art, but its most spectacular achievements were made in the field of architecture.

Kazimierz
Over the last few years, beside the area enclosed by The Plantygarden Ring, all maps of the city centre also cover Kazimierz: formerly an independent city and, today, a neighbouring district, easily accessible from Wawel Hill. Every corner of Kazimierz is witness to a very Krakowian tale: the history of Polish Jews. It is visible in the system of narrow streets itself, in the abundance of markets, in the small tenements, synagogues, and kirkuts - Jewish cemeteries. Following the tragedy of the Second World War and the extermination of Jews by Nazi invaders, Kazimierz was deserted and, for decades, continued to fall into a desolate ruin.The changes that took place at the turn of the 1980s triggered a change that continues to influence the fast-paced growth of this part of the city. Having regained their property, heirs of former inhabitants immediately took to renovation. Today, beautifully restored buildings stand in close vicinity of those totally devastated, whose number luckily continues to diminish.

St Mary's Tower
Also known as the Watch Tower, Wake, Alarm or Bugle Tower, it is the only tower in the world at which a bugle has been played every hour for six hundred years for the entire world to hear. To see and to hear these wonders one must climb 239 steps, to a floor 54 m above ground level. The trumpeter takes just two and a half minutes to ascend the tower but visitors do not need to hurry. At the top they will be heartily greeted by bugle players - members of the fire service, perhaps the last magicians of Krakow...
Bugles have always been played from Krakow towers and gates to announce the beginning and the end of the day. Travellers had to stay outside the city walls if they were caught by night near Krakow and wait until the gates were opened at sunrise.
What were the tunes played from the city's towers and the Royal Castle of Wawel? We will never know. It is only known that when Krakow saw the influx of Hungarians in the late 14th c., as Queen Jadwiga, the future wife of King Jagiello, was about to ascend the throne, a hajnał (bugle-call) came here in a barrel of exquisite Hungarian wine. It came here and stayed to resound in Krakow's skies forever. It was probably first played by Hungarians, and later, when the guards of the Wawel and St Mary's were changed, was taken over by the Poles.

Oskar Schindler's Factory
When Krakow's Podgorze district became the site of the Jewish Ghetto for Krakow's huge Jewish population, many Germans moved into the area to attempt to profit from the Nazi invasion of Poland. Oskar Schindler was such a man, but in the end he came to save the lives of over 1,100 Jews that worked in his factory, often at great risk to his own life and at personal expense. Schindler's factory is at the moment in the process of becoming a museum, but if you slip the guard a fiver you can likely get inside and view the old buildings.

Krakow's Cloth Hall (Sukiennice)
The world's arguably oldest  shopping mall has been in business in the middle of Krakow's central Grand Square (Rynek Glowny) for 700 years. Circa 1300 a roof was put over two rows of stalls to form the first Sukiennice building –  Cloth Hall – where the textile trade used to go on. It was extended into an imposing Gothic structure 108 meter long and eight meter wide in the second half of the 14th century.

The Great Barbican of Krakow
Krakow's main city gate, Brama Florianska, was made insurmountable in the beginning of the l6th century thanks to Europe's mightiest barbican. The circular marvel of military architecture surrounds space 24.4 meter in diameter. Its high walls are three meters thick. The awesome structure, topped with seven turrets, has 130 loopholes in four rows: the lower to be used by artillery, the upper for archers and riflemen.
In the past the Krakow barbican (Barbakan in Polish) was surrounded by a 30-meter-wide, deep moat. However, if the enemy had forced their way in, they would have found themselves entrapped inside and shoot at from all sides. The barbican was connected with the Brama Florianska gate tower by a drawbridge and a walled passage.
Nowadays the 500-year-old fortification serves occasionally for a summer concert hall, theater etc.

Planty Garden Ring
Krakow's medieval city walls were largely demolished after 1807 save the part with the main gate, its adjoining towers and the great barbican. Fortunately, a green belt of public parks called Planty took up the emptied area of 52 acres in the 1820s. It takes an hour to two hours to walk around the Old Town historical district down the leafy alleys among old trees. And the stroll is the more delightful as Krakow’s ancient buildings reveal their unusual aspects. On the other hand, it appears also a journey through the art of gardening for the Planty ring actually proves to be a chain of some 30 gardens in varied styles.

The Salt Mine of Wieliczka
One traveled Frenchman observed in the 18th century that Krakow's Wieliczka salt mine was no less magnificent than the Egyptian pyramids. Millions of visitors, the crowned heads and such celebrities as Goethe and Sarah Bemhardt among them, have appeared to share his enthusiasm when exploring the subterranean world of labyrinthine passages, giant caverns, underground lakes and chapels with sculptures in the crystalline salt and rich ornamentation carved in the salt rock. They have also marveled at the ingenuity of the ancient mining equipment in the Wieliczka salt mine. And the unique acoustics of the place have made hearing music here an exceptional experience.

The Wieliczka Salt Mine, nowadays practically on the southeast outskirts of Krakow, has been worked for 900 years. It used to be one of the world's biggest and most profitable industrial establishments when common salt was commercially a medieval equivalent of today's oil. Always a magnet, since the mid-18th century Krakow's Wieliczka salt mine has become increasingly a tourist attraction in the first place. Today visitors walk underground for about 2,000 m in the oldest part of the salt mine and see its subterranean museum, which takes three hours or so.

Nine centuries of mining in Wieliczka produced a total of some 200 kilometers of passages as well as 2,040 caverns of varied size. The tourist route starts 64 m deep, includes twenty chambers, and ends 135 m below the earth surface, where the world's biggest museum of mining is located with the unique centuries-old equipment among its exhibits. Still below, some 210 m deep, there is a sanatorium for those suffering from asthma and allergy. Occasionally concerts and other events take place in the Wieliczka mine’s biggest chambers.
UNESCO has entered the Wieliczka Salt Mine in its World Heritage Register.