Krakow

Story of Krakow Old Town and Wawel Castle Krakow has a population of about one million and is second biggest city after Warsaw in Poland. This metropolis on the banks of the Vistula, the age-old hub of Polish statehood, is the best known as of thousands of historical monuments, many of them unique on a world scale, surviving in spite of numerous wars, a seat of learning with an academic tradition of over six centuries. [read more="Read more" less="Read less"] In the early Middle Ages Krakow was the central focus of power of the Vislan tribe. Prince Mieszko I unites Krakow and the lands of the Vislans with his Principality of Poland in the late 10th century. About 1036 Casimir the Restorer made Krakow the capital city of the country. It was about this time that stone edifices appeared on the crest of Wawel Hill, while along the northern side of its base a settlement was quickly springing up. In 1138 Boleslaus the Wry-Mouthes chose Krakow as his seats as Senior Prince (feudal overlord). After the ravage perpetrated in 1241 by the Tatarian invasion, Prince Boleslaus the Shy granted Krakow its foundation charter in 1257, therby endowing it with muncipial rights and ordering a new layout of the city's streets to be made, which has come downto us today. It was to be regular criss-cross grid of streets with a centrally situated, square market place, 200 meters square. Soon after foundation the Guildhall was erected in the Market Square to house the municipal authorities. Today there is only a surviving fourteenth-century tower left of medieval town hall. The late Ghotic and Renaissance Cloth Hall, the orgins of which in the thirteenth century were two rows [...]