Wolnica Square and Kazimierz Town Hall

In front of you is the main square of a different town. In 1335, King Casimir III the Great granted town rights to the settlements on the right bank of the Vistula, and the new town took his name: Kazimierz. It had its own walls, its own town hall and its own market, and for centuries it competed with its powerful neighbour, Kraków.

1A town hall with many lives

The white building ahead of you was begun in brick in 1414; before that, the town council met in a wooden house on this same square. It was remodelled in Renaissance style in the 16th century and, after a fire in 1623, gained the crenellated top you can still see. In the 19th century it became a school, and since 1947 it has housed Kraków's Ethnographic Museum, devoted to Polish folk culture.

2Two communities, one town

In 1495, King John I Albert moved Kraków's Jewish population to Kazimierz, to a district north-east of this square around Szeroka Street. For more than four centuries a Christian town, with great Gothic churches such as Corpus Christi, lived side by side with a Jewish town that had its own synagogues, schools, ritual baths and courts. Around the turn of the 19th century, Kazimierz lost its autonomy and was absorbed into Kraków as just another district.

Kazimierz was never a mere suburb: it was a town named after a king.

3What to look for

• The crenellated top of the old town hall, added after the fire of 1623.
• Corpus Christi Basilica, to the north, one of the city's most imposing Gothic churches.
• The sheer size of the square: this was the market of an independent town.