Posted on 11/12/2007 3:10:11 PM PST by lizol
Triumph of the Polish will
Krakow remains a medieval Polish showpiece for all modern visitors to relish and enjoy.
By TOM COCKREM
Miracles do happen. Most Polish people would attest avidly to this. And for evidence, they need only cite their own backyard.
For in the southern part of Poland there exists the town of Krakow. Like its historic sister cities – Warsaw, Wroclaw, Gdansk and others – it dates back a thousand years. But unlike them, its precious centre has survived almost intact, despite numerous attempts to bring it down. It remains a medieval Polish showpiece for all us modern visitors to relish and enjoy.
When you walk the streets of old Krakow today, nearly all of what you see has been standing for at least six hundred years. In many cases eight. And the town today might know itself to be at best benign – a Mecca for scholars, conservationists and lovers of fine art. But it has also known true glory. For Krakow served as Poland’s capital for a good 500 years.
It has also known calamity and strife. A number of its churches endured the savage Tartar onslaught in 1241. All recall the relentless Swedish plundering at the turn of the 17th century, and the humiliating Austrian occupation less than a century after that. But none of this barbarity could rival that inflicted by the Nazis. They left every town they occupied in ruins – except Krakow.
And there is nothing coy or shrinking about the old capital’s great survivors. The town centre is studded with huge cavernous churches, whose soaring gothic towers or Romanesque cupolas have managed to defy, not just rude intruders, but nature’s laws as well. Nothing can contrive to bring them down.
Even the town’s centrepiece is huge – the biggest of its kind in all of medieval Europe. This is Rynek Glowny, the central market square. Each of its sides is around 200m long. In its middle stands the Sukiennice, the Cloth Hall, which for centuries served as the town’s main marketplace.
Like many of Krakow’s most celebrated public buildings, the great hall’s most eye-catching adornments came in the city’s “golden century”, the 16th – its neo-gothic loggias and Renaissance-style pilasters, blind arches, attic roof and masks.
The square also contains the monolithic square tower that is all that remains of the 14th century Town Hall. Diametrically opposite is the squat Romanesque church of St Adalbert. It has stood here for so long – around 900 years – its original floor has sunk two metres below the level of the square.
The commander of the square is the Church of Saint Mary. The taller of its not quite twin towers soars an amazing 81m into the clouds. And it is appropriately decked by a spray of Gothic spires.
From the top window of this same colossal tower comes an hourly reminder of Krakow’s diabolical past. A bugler sounds the hejnal, a Polish reveille. But he leaves off half way through. This is to commemorate a gallant predecessor whose rendition was famously cut short by a well-aimed Tartar arrow to the throat.
Not Tartars, but mostly happy tourists invade airy Rynek Glowny today. And they are extremely well-catered for and entertained. Terrace-style restaurants overwhelm the square’s perimeter, serving an amazing variety of fare: Polish, Italian, Greek, and if costumes say anything, American cowboy.
The old town’s one obvious loss is its wall. It has been supplanted by the Planty, a cultivated garden strip. Of the original eight city gates, only the northern one remains. This is St Florian’s Gate, which is characteristically topped by a lofty square brick tower. Beyond the gate, and once linked to it, stands a 15th century fortress – the Barbakan – whose slim-line gothic towers and delicately arched gate bring Camelot to mind.
The town’s busiest thoroughfare is Ul Grodzka, which heads south from Rynek Glowny. It is lined with popular retail outlets that are frequently punctuated by sumptuous old churches – the gothic Dominican, baroque SS Peter and Paul, and Romanesque St Andrews among them. The street ends at Krakow’s pièce de résistance: Wawel Hill.
Few cities in the world can boast such a culturally significant and monumentally impressive site as this. Wawel castle and cathedral date back to the 16th and 14th centuries respectively. They are perfectly preserved and the site is an archaeologist’s dream.
Neolithic tools have been found in diggings here, as well as ancient Roman artefacts. A wooden palisade is known to have existed on the hill in the 6th century AD, and in medieval times a Romanesque stone fort.
So it is Wawel Hill, above all else, that symbolises best the longevity of the ancient Polish capital. Serious damage was certainly inflicted during the Austrian occupation. The plush royal apartments served as the occupiers’ barracks. The exquisite mural art, severely damaged at the time, has been painstakingly restored.
And miracle of miracles, the triple-towered cathedral came through all of this upheaval quite unscathed. It houses a dazzling array of funerary monuments and chapels. Poland’s most venerated poets, saints and kings are entombed within its walls, among them King Sigismund 1 and Casimir the Great. Sigismund Chapel is crowned by a cupola gilded with 67kg of gold.
King Casimir the Great was the true builder of medieval Krakow. Among his numerous creations was the satellite walled town that took his name – Kazimierz. Sited just south of Wawel Hill, the enclave came to be settled by Jewish refugees escaping persecution in the west. They are thought to have given Poland its name. Polin in their language means “land of peace”.
This seems ironic today, as Krakow’s entire Jewish population was systematically exterminated during the Nazi reign of terror. But their old synagogues remain, and seem to stand in solemn mourning for the dead. Two enormous Christian churches grace Kazimierz as well – Corpus Christi and St Catherine’s. Their austere gothic exteriors prepare you but little for the sumptuous baroque artworks they contain.
There is a famous Polish saying: “Krakow wasn’t built in a day”. Nothing could be truer. For it took a thousand years. And it is this long architectural evolution, with its brilliant culmination in the golden 16th century, that we visitors are privileged to bare witness to today. And you are left in awe to wonder – was it miracle or circumstance that sees the ancient Polish capital survive? Or was it more a triumph of the Polish people’s will?
What a wonderful article, really brings some of the buildings to life in the writing.
“A wooden palisade is known to have existed on the hill in the 6th century AD, and in medieval times a Romanesque stone fort.”
That is interesting. A lot of the great European cities started off as over night camps for Roman Legions and over time became permanent garrisoned forts. Then artisans, merchants and others came to settle around the forts. I didn’t know the Legions made it that far on a permanent basis. Due to the date I would assume they came from the Eastern half of the Empire.
Alas, not Roman, merely Romanesque. :’)
Roman Empire:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Roman_Empire_Territories.png
Hi-res RE map:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd/roman_empire_395.jpg
Byzantine Empire:
http://www.thoughtline.com/byznet/all.htm
Kracow is in the southern portion of the image:
http://www.poland.dial.pipex.com/pl_map_cities.jpg
“Romanesque”
Yes I read that as Roman, not Roman inspired. Thanks for the correction. I am very familiar with the Roman Empire’s borders, but the Legions did get around since they were just as much a fighting force as a diplomatic and exploration entity.
In the case of Kracow, there wasn’t much farther to go, but there also wasn’t a great mandate to do it. Hadrian almost abandoned Dacia (was talked out of it) which had been conquered by Trajan, and which conquest had resulted in a huge haul of treasure that marked the economic pinnacle of the Empire. That second RE map link is pretty interesting in that it shows the four divisions of the Empire (done by Diocletian) as well as a couple of other “Hadrian’s Wall” which were constructed in Central Europe where no natural boundaries (such as the Rhine and Danube) existed. Despite his fabulous popularity in his time, Hadrian was ultimately a disaster for the Empire.
Wasn’t the walls on the border with Germania not really walls, but barriers that would force anybody coming across to be funneled to specific locations where large garrisons were located? I thought I read that somewhere that since Roma couldn’t cover the whole border they built this barriers, so they could allocate the Army’s resources better.
Augustus had cut the size of the regular legions in half, supplemented them with an equal number of auxiliary legions (aux units weren’t systematized before that, I don’t think), and tried to keep the borders as easily defended natural barriers, a practice which continued thereafter to one extent or another. The stationing was, usually, two or three legions in Britain (this was after late in Claudius’ reign), four along the Rhine, five along the Danube, the other 17 or 18 legions as needed throughout the rest of the Empire (plus the 29 aux legions, with the Praetorian Guard — also a legion — in Rome); Rome also established and maintained I think five major naval bases, including one near the mouth of the Danube, in the Black Sea.
Wow, that was longwinded.
Anyway, the legions guarding the frontiers did an exceptionally good job for centuries. When the Empire went through the Thirty Tyrants period, there were multiple candidates claiming to be emperor, but holding various different parts of the whole; Diocletian came along and straightened everything up, restoring unified rule, setting up a system for orderly succession — the Republic finally becoming a constitutional monarchy — and then retiring to a self-sufficient fortress manor in what is now Split, Croatia (the structure still stands, having been in continuous use all those centuries) to test his system of succession.
Further turmoil followed some years later, but eventually Constantine reunified the Empire.
Wow, who put a nickel in me?
The upshot is, the frontiers were well guarded, but with relatively few troops. The climate got colder (the Roman Cooling) and Central Asia’s peoples started moving west (as well as south and east), as they had in previous cooling episodes, and started to cross the frontiers and settle in what is now France, Romania, etc. During another civil war on the continent, Britain’s legions were withdrawn early in the 5th c AD, and never went back.
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