Main Square, Medieval market square in Kraków, Poland
The Main Square is a large paved area at the heart of Kraków's old town, surrounded by multistory buildings with colorful facades and ground floor arcades. At the center of the plaza stand several freestanding structures, including an elongated market hall with arched galleries and a slender tower made of dark brick.
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 This renaming lasted only a few years and is now found only in historical documents.
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