Main Square, Pedestrian square in Stare Miasto, Kraków, Poland

The Main Square is a large paved open square in Kraków, bordered on the left by multi-story buildings with light-colored facades and many windows. At its far side stands a red-brick church with a tall central tower of stacked arched windows and a spire, flanked by two smaller towers with dark domes and spires around a pale stone entrance portal topped by a green sculpture group.

After the city received Magdeburg rights in 1257, this central marketplace emerged as a junction for eleven main streets and grew into an important trading location for merchants from different regions. Over the centuries the surrounding buildings were rebuilt several times, with Gothic elements gradually joined by Renaissance and later Baroque features.

The plaza carries its Polish name Rynek Główny since medieval times and serves today as both a meeting point for locals and a stage for street performers and café terraces. On warm evenings the space fills with people strolling between the old facades or sitting on the steps near the monuments.

The entire area is reserved for pedestrians and accessible from all sides through the neighboring lanes, with flat paving that makes movement easy. Below the plaza are exhibition rooms with archaeological finds, reached through entrances inside the market hall.

During the German occupation in World War II the plaza was renamed Adolf Hitler Platz, but the original name returned immediately after liberation in 1945. This renaming lasted only a few years and is now found only in historical documents.