Kraków is unlike any of the other cities we’ve been to. It has similarities to Prague and Budapest, but it really is its own thing. The churches here were all distinctive and different, often combining multiple styles and architectural elements without any apparent concern for consistency. The city is a great blend of history and natural beauty.
Moat Path
One of the best features of Kraków in my opinion is what I called the Moat Path. There was a city wall at one point with a with a moat around it. The moat was filled in, and it was turned into a tree-lined path that encircles the Old Town area. It has benches and fountains, and we walked on it almost every day. It was such a nice place to take a walk, as the shade was enough to make it bearable even in the afternoon. We calculated that a full circuit of the path was around 7,000 steps, so on days where we didn’t do any touristing activities, it was a great way to get our steps in. (We aim for a minimum of 10,000 per day, which is easier some days than others.)
Crazy Churches
The churches in Kraków are delightfully eclectic. We’ve seen so many churches in Spain, France, and Italy, but these were their own special category. For example, the big cathedral in the main town square is Gothic and has some of the same things you’d see at, say, Notre-Dame, but then everything is painted. And not the same colors or patterns, either. It looks like a carnival! The wood carvings were very ornate, and I’m pretty sure I found a velociraptor on one of the pulpits.
The church of St. Anne looks at first glance like a fairly typical, if extra pastel, Baroque church. If you look more closely at the “statues” lining the nave, you realize that they’re actually flat and painted to look like sculptures. What’s fun about them is that they extend past the columns they’re mounted on, so they’re essentially cut-outs. The rest of the church is similarly painted to look as if it’s made of much costlier stone and marble. I like that they made the most of the materials they had. The effects are surprisingly realistic, and the church really is quite pretty even though it’s not as ornate as the typical Baroque churches we saw in Rome.
Oskar Schindler Factory
The Oskar Schindler Factory has been converted into a museum. I had assumed that it would be focused on the story portrayed in the movie Schindler’s List, but it was a bit broader than that. The permanent exhibition is about the Nazi occupation of Poland, and how it affected everyone. There were displays and artifacts on Jewish life in the ghetto and of course Schindler’s factory, but there was also a lot of information about non-Jewish Poles and their experience under the Nazi occupation. (One thing I’ve noticed in a lot of the European museums: they’re very careful to describe things as “Nazi” or “German Nazi,” never just “German” when referring to things that occurred in WWII.) I learned a lot of details that I previously had just a rough understanding of regarding World War II. I only learned a little bit about Oskar Schindler and the actual factory, not because I already knew a lot from the movie (I saw it so long ago that I really don’t remember the details) but because there wasn’t that much about it in the museum.
Dragon’s Den
Kraków has a legend about a dragon, and I was very excited to go to the official Dragon’s Den on Wawel Hil. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), there weren’t any dragons at home when we went, but it was still pretty neat. I’m not particularly adventurous, so this is as close to cave-exploring as I ever want to get – high ceilings, electric lighting, and nice spiral stairs down to the lower levels.
Our time in Kraków was pretty mellow. We were there for 13 days but only saw a few things. We mostly walked around the Moat Path and watched a few World Cup matches in our super-comfy second apartment.
Photos of Kraków
