saving ink

Last month, I posted A Brief History of Poland for Non-Poles, which had originally run in the spring issue of Airgate magazine (one of my glamorous freelance writing gigs). The natural follow-up would be a brief history of the city I’ve now lived in for nearly six years: Kraków (which originally appeared in the summer issue of Airgate). Enjoy.

While the nation of Poland had yet to exist before the 11th century, by then Kraków had several hundred years of history under its belt. According to legend (an irrefutable historical source, if you ask me), the settlement was established in the fourth century when a brave shepherd named Krak defeated the dragon living under Wawel Hill, rendering the surrounding lands safe for settlement and flourishing under his rule. Unfortunately, certain killjoys calling themselves “historians” debate this legend, citing instead a tribe of Vistulans as the original settlers of Wawel Hill.

Capital status

Around 990, the first royal dynasty, Piast, incorporated Kraków into their territories, and the growing city became the seat of the Polish government in 1038. The city gained even more prestige in 1364, when King Casimir III founded the Cracow Academy (now the Jagiellonian University), the second oldest such institution in Central Europe. The university, along with the city’s capital status, made Kraków a flourishing centre of learning and arts in medieval Europe, home to such visionaries as Nicolaus Copernicus (Mikołaj Kopernik as they called him at home). Its Jewish history was also cultivated during this time, when the district of Kazimierz was established in 1495 as a home for the area’s Jewish community.

The Renaissance came to the city in the 15th century, and with it new ideas in the sciences and further development of the arts and all good intellectual pursuits. Much of Kraków’s iconic architecture arose at this time, including the famous alter of St Mary’s Cathedral, and most of the structures of Wawel Castle, when King Sigismund I hired a Florentine architect for some major remodelling.

However, Kraków’s role as royal capital would only last until 1596, when Swede Sigismund III moved the capital to Warsaw (a demotion many Cracovians still feel angry about today).

Invasions and partitions

After several Mongol invasions left the city in ruins, Cracovians finally got smart and decided to build a wall – and not just any wall, but a 3 km massive defensive structure with 46 towers at its completion, the most famous of which is St Florian’s Gate, still standing today. However, no amount of towers could prevent the decline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that began in the 17th century and cumulated in the three partitions of Poland and the end of the Polish nation at the end of the 18th century. For the next 123 years, Kraków’s fate would be in the hands of the Austrian Empire.

Austrian overlords

In 1795, Kraków officially became a part of the Austrian province of Galicia. By most accounts, the Cracovians had it better than Poles under Russian or Prussian rule. The city again became a centre of culture and art, called the “Polish Athens”, after 1866, when Galicia gained autonomy and Polish became the official language of the area once again. This was another golden era for Kraków, when bigwigs of art such as Jan Matejko, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Stanisław Wyspiański and other names you’ll find in the National Museum were flourishing.

At the start of the 20th century, Kraków was a thriving modern metropolis, with a newly built tram network consisting of such wonders as electric lighting. While the First World War did some damage to the city, it was relatively unscathed and had the added benefit of being incorporated into the newly-reformed Polish state in 1919, which lasted a grand total of 20 years before Hitler and Stalin ruined the party.

Modern Kraków

The Second World War devastated the Cracovian population, especially its previously burgeoning Jewish community, but left the city’s infrastructure mostly unharmed. After the war, the new Soviet authorities ordered the construction of Nowa Huta as a working man’s counterpart to bourgeois, academic Kraków. Ironically enough, the district, now a part of Kraków, became a centre of anti-communist protests in the 1980s, and now remains a relic of communist chic since the fall of the Iron Curtain and Poland’s regained independence in 1989.

Though no longer serving as Poland’s capital, today Kraków still enjoys the title of “Cultural Capital of Poland” (and has the UNESCO status to prove it), and Cracovians certainly like to mention this fact as often as possible. And while it may not get the important state visits or high-level bankers that Warsaw enjoys, most Cracovians will tell you that they’re proud of living in an ancient city founded by a dragon-slayer.