Cracow, Poland — Where to Go
Cracow Sightseeing Overview
Cracow is very easy to navigate on foot as most of the main sights are located within Planty - a leafy park that forms a green belt around the historic center or Stare Miasto (Old Town). The epicenter of tourist Cracow is the Rynek Glowny (Main Market Square), one of Europe's largest and most impressive public spaces, which is overrun by tourists during the high season. Relaxing in a pavement cafe here is a good way to get acquainted with the city.
Away from the main square, busy Grodzka leads towards Wzgorze Wawelskie (Wawel Hill), from where Cracow's castle overlooks the city. It was here that the Polish kings ruled from the 14th to the late-16th centuries and there is enough to occupy you for at least a full day, including the Castle itself, the Royal Chambers (or State Rooms), Crown Treasury and Armoury and Wawel Cathedral with its Royal Tombs in the crypt.
A 10-minute walk south from Wawel is the district of Kazimierz, where the city's sizeable Jewish population prospered before the Nazis arrived. There is little of sightseeing merit on the right bank of the sleepy Wisla River (Vistula River) farther south, apart from what's left of the old wartime Jewish ghetto of Podgorze, an area that has received an ever-growing number of visitors following the release of the film Schindler's List in 1993.
Cracow Tourist Information
Cracow Tourist Information Center
ulica Szpitalna 25 (kiosk on Planty)
Tel: (012) 432 0110.
Website: www.krakow.pl and www.karnet.krakow.pl
There is also a tourist information center in the Town Hall Tower on the Main Market Square (tel: (012) 433 7310) and one on ulica Jozefa 7 (tel: (012) 422 0471) covering the Kazimierz district. Orbis Travel, Rynek Glowny 41 (tel: (012) 619 2459; www.orbis.pl), also offers information and tours.
The Malopolska Tourist Information Center
Rynek Glowny 1/3 (Cloth Hall)
Tel: (012) 421 7706.
Website: www.mcit.pl
Cracow Sightseeing
The Krakow Card (www.krakowcard.com) is available for two or three days and entitles the holder to free travel on public transport (including bus 192 to the airport), free entry to 32 museums (not including those on Wawel Hill) and discounts on organized tours and at certain restaurants.
Cracow Sightseeing
The Krakow Card (www.krakowcard.com) is available for two or three days and entitles the holder to free travel on public transport (including bus 192 to the airport), free entry to 32 museums (not including those on Wawel Hill) and discounts on organized tours and at certain restaurants.
Key Attractions in Cracow, Poland
Rynek Glowny (Main Market Square)
Dating from 1257, this was one of the largest market squares in medieval Europe. Occupying the center of the square, the 15th-century Sukiennice(Cloth Hall) is filled with souvenir stalls in its vaulted-ground-floor passages. Along the sides of the building, pavement cafes draw locals and tourists alike. The Malopolska Contemporary Art Collection (Malopolskie Kolekcje Sztuki Nowoczesnej) is upstairs.
Surrounding the square are impressive period houses and two of the city's most important churches. Kosciol Sw Wojciecha (St Adalbert's Church) dates from the 11th century and is the oldest extant church in Cracow, but it is the gothic Mariacki (Basilica of the Assumption of Our Lady), with its twin spires, that really catches the eye. Within this church is the 15th-century Chapel of Our Lady of Czestochowa and Wit Stwosz's large stone crucifix and wooden pentaptych, The Dormition of the Virgin, dating from 1489. It is the largest gothic altarpiece in Europe. Above the organ loft, the church also boasts excellent 14th-century stained glass as well as art nouveau glass Stanislaw Wyspianski and Jozef Mehoffer. The taller of the two towers was the city's watch-tower; and every hour, the traditional hejnal is played by the town trumpeter, who cuts off the last note to commemorate the death of a trumpeter killed by a Turkish arrow.
Also on the square is the Wieza Ratuszowa (Town Hall Tower), the only surviving part of the town hall, which dates from the 15th century.
Basilica of the Assumption of Our Lady
Rynek Glowny
Malopolska Contemporary Art Collection
Rynek Glowny 1/3
Tel: (012) 422 1166.
Website: www.moma.pl
Zamek Krolewski (Royal Castle)
Perched atop Wawel Hill, the Royal Castle was the seat of Poland's kings from the early 11th to the late 16th centuries. The majority of the castle is Renaissance in style (1504-35), although Romanesque and gothic elements remain. Today, it is a museum complex, and among the treasures in the historic interior of the Royal Chambers (or State Rooms) is a collection of 16th-century Flemish tapestries, paintings and period furniture. Other separate sections of the castle open to the public include the Royal Private Apartments and the Crown Treasury and Armoury. The Oriental Art Exhibition has an excellent collection of Near- and Far-Eastern art, including important 17th-century Turkish items. Also worth a look is The Lost Wawel exhibit, which showcases the excavated remains of Wawel's original buildings, including the foundations of the oldest-known church in Poland, the early 11th-century Rotunda of SS Felix and Adauctus. More whimsical is the Dragon's Den, a karst cave reached by a spiral staircase, where the legendary Prince Krakus (thus Krakow or Cracow) supposedly killed the Wawel dragon.
Wawel Castle
Wawel 5
Tel: (012) 422 5155.
Website: www.wawel.krakow.pl
Katedra Wawelska (Wawel Cathedral)
Part of Wawel, this cathedral (also known as the Archcathedral Church of SS Venceslaus and Stanislausor the Royal Cathedral) is the coronation site and burial place of almost all of Poland's monarchs and rulers. It was built in the early-11th century by King Boleslaw the Brave after Cracow was made a bishopric. The relics of St Stanislaw, the patron saint of Poland, are kept in a chapel here. Of the many royal chapels, the Renaissance Sigismund Chapel stands out. You can climb the tower to see the 9,979kg (11-tonne) Sigismund Bell and enjoy the fine view.
Wawel 3
Tel: (012) 422 2643.
Website: www.katedra-wawelska.pl (Polish only)
Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie (National Museum in Cracow)
The museum's large collection is located in a number of separate buildings, including the Princes Czartoryski Museum (see below). The so-called Main Building houses a collection of decorative art, weapons and 20th-century Polish art, in addition to staging temporary exhibitions.
aleja 3 Maja 1
Tel: (012) 295 5600.
Website: www.muzeum.krakow.pl
Muzeum Ksiazat Czartoryskich (Princes Czartoryski Museum)
A large collection of ancient art from Greece and Egypt, as well as Oriental artifacts, weapons and Turkish carpets can be found here. European (mainly Italian, Dutch and Flemish) paintings and sculptures cover the 13th to 18th centuries - the most famous works here are Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine and Rembrandt's Landscape with the Good Samaritan.
ulica Sw Jana 19
Tel: (012) 422 5566.
Website: www.muzeum-czartoryskich.krakow.pl (Polish only)
Stara Synagoga (Old Synagogue)
Founded in 1335 by King Kazimierz Wielki on the southern fringe of Cracow, Kazimierz was for centuries a separate town, only merging with Cracow in the late-18th century. Reminders of the Jewish community, who lived in the Kazimierz district for centuries up till the Holocaust, are everywhere. Part of the Cracow City History Museum, the Old Synagogue (or Alte Shul in Yiddish) houses a permanent photographic exhibit on Jewish Cracow and the Holocaust. The synagogue was built in the late-15th century and reconstructed in Renaissance style by the Florentine architect, Matteo Gucci, after a fire in 1557. The only two functioning synagogues in Cracow - the Remuh Synagoga, ulica Szeroka 40, with cemetery attached, and the Isaak Synagoga, ulica Kupa 18, are located nearby.
ulica Szeroka 24
Tel: (012) 422 0962.
Collegium Maius
Housed in the oldest building of the Cracow Academy (the forerunner of today's Jagiellonian University) and dating to the mid-15th century, this museum is home to an eclectic collection of rare 16th-century astronomic instruments (used by star pupil Copernicus), a fascinating alchemy room, old rectors' sceptres and the oldest existing globe (1510) showing the American continent.
ulica Jagiellonska 15
Tel: (012) 422 0549.
Website: www.uj.edu.pl/muzeum (Polish only)
Further Distractions
Muzeum Farmacji (Pharmacy Museum)
A branch of the Jagiellonian University Medical School, this fascinating museum is housed in a beautiful townhouse and is crammed with old laboratory equipment, rare pharmaceutical instruments, heaps of glassware, stoneware, mortars, jars, barrels, medical books and documents. There are recreated pharmacies dating back to the 19th and early-20th centuries, and the garret is crammed with elixirs and panaceas, including vile vials or dried mummy powder.
ulica Florianska 25
Tel: (012) 421 9279.
Website: www.cm-uj.krakow.pl
Muzeum Galicja (Galicia Museum)
The relatively new Galicia Museum celebrates Jewish culture in Galicia, an overwhelmingly Jewish province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that included Cracow, and commemorates the victims of the Holocaust. The photo exhibition depicting modern-day remnants of south-eastern Poland's once thriving Jewish community is particularly impressive.
ulica Dajwor 18
Tel: (012) 421 6842.
Website: www.galiciajewishmuseum.org
Centrum Sztuki i Techniki Japonskiej Manggha (Manggha Center of Japanese Art and Technology)
While this modern structure may appear to be at odds with Cracow's many historic buildings, the center has one of the continent's finest collection of ancient Japanese art, ceramics, weapons, fabrics, scrolls and woodcuts. It features some 7,000 pieces collected by Feliks Jasienski (1861-1929), who first discovered Japanese art while studying in Paris in the 1880s. He adopted the pseudonym Manggha from a transliteration of the Japanese manga, the title of Hokusu's famous series of sketches, and donated his collection to the National Museum in Cracow in 1920.
ulica Konopnickiej 26
Tel: (012) 267 2703.
Website: www.manggha.krakow.pl
Nowa Huta (New Town)
Although all traces of communist rule have been erased from Cracow's Old Town, those with an interest in Socialist architecture can travel out of town to the model Soviet suburb of New Town. The Malopolska Tourist Information Center (tel: (012) 421 7706; www.mcit.pl), on the Main Market Square, organizes tours.
This ‘New Steelworks', with its wide boulevards, geometrically ordered streets and imposing buildings, extends from the plac Centralny (Central Square). Yet, while it characterizes communist architectural style, it also displays the Poles' resistance to certain aspects of communism - as can be witnessed by the Church of Our Lady Queen of Poland, designed by Wojciech Peitrzyk and built between 1967 and 1977. It is known as Arka Pana (Lord's Ark) due to its shape.
The Church of St Bartholomew, located at ulica Klasztorna, just in front of the 18th-century Cistercian Abbey, dates from 1466 and is Poland's only surviving example of a three-nave wooden church. It contains beautiful 14th-century frescos and a sculpture of Jesus.
Also worth a visit is the art gallery in the Nowa Huta Cultural Center, located at aleja Jana Pawla II.
Nowohuckie Centrum Kultury (Nowa Huta Cultural Center)
aleja Jana Pawla II 232
Tel: (012) 644 0266.
Website: www.nh.pl orwww.nck.krakow.pl
