Zinar Castle

It is a place for many: the most important public space of Krakow, the largest market in medieval Europe, bringing together everything that is most characteristic and recognizable for the city, and finally the most beautiful, most important, most captivating...

Huge the main square of the city was laid out during the city's foundation under the Magdeburg Law in 1257. It was built at the intersection of former trade routes, on a square plan with a side slightly longer than 200 m. The name Rynek (in German, Ring) appeared for the first time around 1300, the present one was given only at the end of the 19th century.

When delineating the Market Square, a checkerboard pattern characteristic of medieval cities was used. There are three streets leading out of each frontage of the market square. Only Grodzka Street, running at the site of the old trade route and in close proximity to the church of St. Wojciech, received an oblique and extended figure. Other deviations from symmetry were necessary. They resulted from the location of the buildings that were standing here earlier - before the location -, such as the churches of St. Mary or St. Wojciech. Krakow's Old Town, with its regular urban layout, preserved from the Middle Ages, the heart of which is the Main Market Square, was entered on the UNESCO list in 1978 as one of the first 12 sites in the world.

Even taking into account all irregularities, the location the plan was simple and functional. From then on, this modern center satisfied all the basic needs of the inhabitants related to the functioning of the city (the seat of the authorities in the town hall), commercial and economic life (Sukiennice) and finally religious life (the municipal parish church of St. Mary's Church). It was also a place of execution of punishments and executions: a platform for the executioner was placed between St. Mary's Church and the Gray Tenement House - currently No. 6, and the pillory used for flogging and public branding was located at the exit of ul. Sławkowska.

Although it seems that in the thirteenth century the square was designed to be a bit exaggerated (making it the largest square in medieval Europe, which today is still second only to a few), the Market Square was quickly developed, mainly with stalls where cloth was traded , salt, barrels, shoes, as well as coal, lead and copper. The buildings were chaotic and did not make the Market Square proud. When the local government in the nineteenth century began the action of tidying up Krakow, demolished, among others, stalls and outbuildings around the Cloth Hall (with the simultaneous reconstruction of the building) and standing between the town hall tower and the church of St. Wojciech, buildings of Little and Big Scales. The town hall had already been pulled down a little earlier, leaving only its tower. In 1898, a monument to Adam Mickiewicz was unveiled. In this way, the Market Square gained an image similar to today's one. The fairs organized here before Christmas and Easter refer to the commercial traditions of the Main Market Square, and the florist's stalls are an inseparable element of the local color. , triumphs, parades and lavish weddings. The market was located on the so-called The Royal Route (from the Barbican to Wawel), which was the scene of the king's ceremonial entries and foreign envoys. Often the significance of the events taking place here went far beyond the city limits. In 1525, a feudal tribute to King Sigismund the Old was paid here by the prince of Prussia, Albrecht Hohenzollern (the tribute ended the 300-year-long period of disputes and wars with the Teutonic Order). It was also here that Tadeusz Kościuszko (1794) swore allegiance to the nation - this was how the Kościuszko Uprising formally began. The first takeover of power by the Polish army after 123 years of partitions in Poland took place under the town hall tower in 1918. In times quite close to us, in May 1981, a special, silent demonstration took place here - the White March, a spontaneous protest after the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II.

For centuries, annual events related to local traditions - the Lajkonik procession, a Christmas nativity competition organized from 1937 on the steps of the Adam Mickiewicz monument or the enthronement of the Fowler King. It is impossible to imagine the market without horse-drawn carriages and pigeons, according to the legend of knights turned into birds.

But even if they were quite ordinary and not enchanted pigeons, the Main Market Square remains a magical place...