The ancient seat of kings and the hub for intelligentsia, Kraków emerged from the Second World War as the only major Polish city that was not reduced to rubble. Its picture-perfect Old Town comes complete with Europe’s largest medieval market square and a fairy-tale Wawel castle overlooking the river. Meticulously restored and preserved, the city’s architectural monuments house countless museum collections of priceless art and artefacts. Kraków is also home to one of Europe’s oldest academic centres, the Jagiellonian University, founded by King Kazimierz the Great in 1364.
Legend attributes the city’s founding to Krakus, the mythical ruler who defeated the Wawel Dragon. The mysterious earthwork Mounds named after Krakus and his daughter Wanda were estimated to have been built in the 7th century. By 966, the date of the first written record of the city’s name, Kraków had already grown into a busy commercial centre. In the 990s the city was incorporated into the principality of Piast dynasty and in 1038, it became the capital of Poland. The 13th century was marked by incessant Mongol invasions, in response to which, the city was fortified by 3 kilometres of defensive walls, towers and gates.
Kraków experienced its ‘golden age’ during the joint Polish-Lithuanian Jagiełło dynasty (1386-1572). Talented artists, humanists and scientists arrived from Italy and Germany to create impressive new buildings, sculptures, frescos, and other artworks. The royal residence, Wawel Castle, was turned into a pearl of Renaissance architecture. After several centuries of roaring times the city’s fortunes began to turn with the death of King Zygmunt II in 1572, who left no heir. With the throne passing to the Swedish House of Vasa, Kraków’s importance began to decline. King Zygmunt III decided to move the Polish capital to Warsaw in 1596, although Wawel castle still maintained its role as the official site of most of the royal coronations and burials. In 1655, the city was pillaged during the Swedish Invasion (The Deluge).
The last years of the once-great and vast Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were characterised by political ineffectiveness and foreign influence, culminating in the First, Second and Third Partition of Poland in 1772, 1791 and 1794 by neighbouring Austrian, Russian and Prussian powers. Before the Third Partition, in 1794, Polish freedom-fighter Tadeusz Kościuszko initiated the Insurrection against the foreign rule, which begun on Kraków’s Market Square. It eventually failed and the city became part of the Austrian province of Galicia. In 1809-1846, as result of Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, Kraków gained a semi-independent status, before, in the aftermath of yet another unsuccessful uprising, being again annexed by the Austrian Empire.
Austrian rule was more lenient than that imposed on Polish lands in the Russian and Prussian-ruled partitions and, as a result, Kraków became a centre of Polish nationalism, culture and art. Kraków’s fortified city walls were levelled with the exceptions of the section around the Floriańska Gate and the Barbican, and the Planty park was created where the walls and moat once stood.
When the First World War broke out, Kraków was besieged by Russian troops forcing many residents to flee the city. A revolt liberated Kraków in advance of the war’s end on the 31st of October 1918, and when the Treaty of Versailles re-established a Polish sovereign state, Kraków returned under its jurisdiction.
With the onset of the Second World War in September 1939, Nazi German forces entered Kraków, and Wawel castle became the seat of the General Governor Hans Frank. Over 150 professors and lecturers were rounded up in Jagiellonian University and shipped to concentration camps in what is known as operation ‘Sonderaktion Krakau.’ The Jewish population was ejected from the Kazimierz district into a ghetto in Podgórze, and after 1943 annihilated in mass executions on-site and in nearby concentration camps, Płaszów and Auschwitz. Kraków was liberated by the Soviet offensive on the 18th of January 1945.
After the war, under the Soviet communist regime, the social realist district of Nowa Huta was built around the country’s largest steel works in an attempt to weaken Kraków’s intellectual and artistic heritage through industrialisation.
In 1978, Kraków’s archbishop Cardinal Karol Wojtyła became the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. He is credited with giving moral guidance to the Polish pro-democracy movement, which gathered enough momentum to force democratic changes in 1989. The introduction of free market economy stimulated further development of the city, which became not only a world-class tourist destination but also a leading IT centre and home to numerous multinational companies.
