Krakow forever
To wonderful people - Irena Sovinska
and Antonia Bialit is dedicated
Krakow…
"Heart" of Poland…
Ancient and modern…
Unique and somewhat similar to many Polish cities…
The city is sacred to every person who has Polish blood in his veins.
How happy I am to have recognized you ...
I learned and fell in love for the rest of my life! I am Polish by paternal line. And I realized how dear everything Polish is to me - only on your streets… More than 13 years ago… How many wonderful minutes I had just walking your streets…
How many good people I met here… How many good things I learned… How much joy there was in my soul… And here, this is where the first love was born in my heart… So much time has passed, so much has happened…
And I haven't written a line about you yet! That's how it turned out… Sorry, dear…
According to my stories, many of my friends and acquaintances know about you, but that's not enough!
You have a lot to learn about how beautiful and great you are! And they recognize.
I dedicate this story to Antonia and Irena, my friends from Krakow, who will be its first readers. I decided so.
Where to start?
I've heard a lot about Krakow before. Since childhood, I have loved the film "Major Whirlwind" - about the rescue of Krakow by Soviet spies and soldiers in January of the victorious 1945. But it never occurred to me that one day I would find out, fall in love and even want to live forever (unfortunately, this is just a dream) in this wonderful city.
So… It was January 1999, I was 22 years old, I was an ordinary Lviv student with very vague prospects for the future. My father traveled to Poland periodically from 1997 and worked in Rzeszó w and Krakow.
His Polish colleagues from Krakow (very nice and kind people) invited all of us, our family, to visit for the Christmas holidays. These people are like relatives to me now.
That's what I call them about myself - "Uncle Anthony" and "Aunt Irene". And their son Philip and daughter Malvina (yes, don't be surprised, they give such a name to girls in Poland, though it is quite rare) to me almost like a brother and sister. This family no longer lives in Krakow, they moved to other cities - who knows where, life was scattered. And this is the reason for the slight sadness I feel at the thought that when I am in Krakow again (and it will happen, I believe in it! ) - they will not be there…
That's how I got to Krakow. Not expecting that this is where I will spend some of the best days of my life.
I traveled to Krakow many times between 1999 and 2006; then and to this day - unfortunately, it does not work out ...And always on the day of arrival my heart trembled with joy, and in my eyes even once there were tears ...And I whispered then (so as not to hear the taxi driver driving me) : "Hello, dear! ».
And there was sadness in my soul every day of departure…
I will not tell about my adventures there - it is unlikely that anyone will be interested. They did not have anything so remarkable. Well, except that in 2005 my friends and I were returning to Krakow from Gdań sk by train, and our companion was Andrzej Wajda (a famous Polish film director who doesn't know). He lives in Krakow and I even know where his house is.
I will tell you, friends, better about the incomparable medieval (and not only) streets of Krakow, the beauty of its churches, the great Polish river Vistula, which for centuries carries its waters past the walls of the ancient Wawel… And much more, what I know and remember and what I think I will remember in the course of the story.
In fact, I began to learn about Krakow from its very center, the heart of the city - Rynek Gluwny Square ).
This is where I will start my story about my (and not only) favorite Krakow.
The Market Square is one of the largest squares in Europe (200x200 m), founded in 1257 by King Boleslaw the Shy (he, by the way, gave Krakow the status of a city). It has several magnificent monuments of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture.
The main one is, of course, St. Mary's Church, a beautiful and unusual Gothic church of the XIV century. Unusual that its towers are so different! There is an old Krakow legend that tells us that they are what they are, because they were built in advance by two masons and one, seeing that his brother was building faster, killed him out of envy and then in despair. rushed down from his tower.
The real reason is much more prosaic - the Cracow city administration at that time simply did not always have enough money for construction, so the towers were built of different heights and did not look like that, because the church was built for a long time and builders of different years added something of their own. The towers themselves are Gothic, and their top - Renaissance.
The church has a unique carved wooden Gothic altar by master Vit Stvosch (his real name is Faith Stoss, he is from Nuremberg, the altar was created in the XV century), its height is about 10 m, it consists of 3 parts (2 movable side and fixed central), contains 200 figures, 2000 carved parts and was created 12 years ago. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of him - photos and videos are forbidden inside the church.
In general, in addition to this legend about the brothers-builders of the towers of St. Mary's Church, there are many other interesting legends about Krakow - about the Krakow Heinal; about Wawel (the royal castle at the bend of the Vistula) and the Polish kings (about their ghosts, of course), who gather in his dungeons every Christmas night and discuss the problems and troubles of present-day Poland; about Prince Probus and his knights who turned into pigeons; about the Wawel dragon-Smok, about the Krakow sorcerer Mr. Twardowski and many others.
I can't help but say a few words about Heinal - this is a melody that sounds every hour from the tower of the St. Mary's Church, it is played on a trumpet by Krakow guards (firefighters). Translated from Hungarian heinal means "morning". It sounds for about a minute and ends abruptly in the most unexpected place.
It was so - in the Middle Ages, during the next attack of the Tatars on Krakow, a vigilant guard, noticing their approach, sounded the alarm - heynal, but a Tatar arrow, piercing his throat, interrupted him at the same place. Here is such a legend.
Read them, if they suddenly fall into your hands - you will not regret it!
Also on the Market you can see the following monuments - a small church of St. Wojciech (also a Gothic monument), the Town Hall Tower (only the tower remains, the Town Hall building has not survived after the last fire), Platinum (Cloth Rows, Renaissance monument) and several other buildings -monuments, mostly in the Baroque era, such as - "Townhouse under the foot-and-mouth disease", "Townhouse under the Sheep" (palace of famous Polish magnates Potocki), hotel "Under the Rose", which in 1805 . Tsar Alexander I, the house where Marina Mnishek and False Dmitry I lived, and other buildings stopped: they now house cafes, restaurants and famous Krakow shops.
After entering the square, first of all, the Church of St. Mary and the Cloth Hall, which are located in the center, attract attention. Once, in the Middle Ages in the center of the square were cloth benches (repeatedly rebuilt), the building acquired its current appearance in the sixteenth century - in 1555.
the wooden predecessor house burned down and a new Renaissance style was built by Italian craftsmen, which we can see today. It now houses souvenir shops, and on the second floor - a branch of the Museum of Fine Arts (there, unfortunately, I have not been able to visit yet).
What else is remarkable about the market? There are memorial plaques inserted directly into the cobblestones - one dedicated to the oath of allegiance by the Master of the Teutonic Order Albrecht Hohenzollern to King Sigismund I in the fifteenth century, the other to the oath of Tadeusz Kosciuszko to the Polish people in the late eighteenth century.
Well, I told you about the market. A little like that - a galloping gallop…
Now let's move on to the second main historical site of Krakow - the Wawel Royal Castle.
It is one of the most beautiful medieval castles in Europe, its architecture is a harmonious combination of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles. The first castle on the Wawel Hill was built by the first king of Poland Boleslaw the Brave in the XI century, rebuilt in the XIV and burned down in 1499. The current castle was founded in 1550. , built in the late sixteenth century. It houses one of the main Polish shrines - Wawel Cathedral (Wawel Cathedral, a monument of the Gothic era) with the chapel of one of the main Polish saints - St. Stanislaus, which houses (in a silver sarcophagus) the relics of this famous saint.
All Polish kings were crowned here, except the last - Stanislaw August Poniatowski, who was crowned in Warsaw, and it was after his reign that Poland disappeared from the map of the world for almost 130 years. Is it because of that?
Who knows… In the cathedral there are "coffins" (emphasis on the first syllable, meaning tombs) of many Polish kings and famous people of Poland, once - kings Boleslaw the Brave, Wladyslaw Loketko and Casimir the Great, Queen Jadwiga, poets Adam Mickiewicz and Julia Slovatsky, Marshal Jó zef Pilsudski, General Tadeusz Kosciuszko and his associate Jó zef Poniatowski, Polish Prime Minister Wladyslaw Sikorski and others.
On the highest of the two towers of the Cathedral is the "Zygmunt's Bell" (Zygmunt's Bell, named after the master foundryman who cast it, 16th century) - the most famous bell in Poland, and the two domes to the right and below in the photo of the cathedral are the domes of Zygmunt Chapel (chapel), is a monument of the Renaissance, named after the King of Poland Sigmund the Old (XV century).
<> The Wawel Cathedral (or St. Stanislaus and Wenceslas Cathedral) was founded in the 11th century, but unfortunately nothing has survived from that church.
The current cathedral (the one you see in the photo) was built in the 14th century (the main nave), the nave aisles date back to the 17th century.
If you go right past the walls of the cathedral into a narrow passage - you will find a spacious courtyard of the castle with magnificent Renaissance colonnades of the sixteenth century.
In the XIX century, these colonnades were built of brick by the Austrians (this part of Poland then belonged to Austria), they built stables here. In the corner, right in front of us, at the entrance to one of the museum's exhibitions "Royal Rooms" with the most famous collection of ancient French tapestries (Arras), according to knowledgeable people is a place where there are streams of positive energy for men and women. outputs "of energy flows). There is often someone standing there - "charging". As you know, people - the concepts of "bioenergy" and "bioradiation" are increasingly coming to life. As they say: if you want - believe, if you want - no.
The castle has a museum consisting of 4 exhibits - "Royal Rooms", "Treasury", "Weapons", "Wawel is lost" (the exhibition is located in the dungeon of the castle, where you can see the oldest monuments of the Wawel).
And in the "Armory" is the famous coronation sword of Polish kings - "Scherbets". It belonged to Boleslaw the Brave.
At the exit from the Wawel on the fortress wall you can see many plaques with the names of 6329 citizens of Krakow, who donated their money to buy the Wawel from the Austro-Hungarian government in 1905.
We leave the Wawel and now go to one of the main tourist arteries of the city - Grodzka Street (Gorodetska in our way). It connects Rynek Gluwny with Wawel, it is the route of the famous Krakow tourist route "Droga Krulovska" ("Royal Road").
This way, a long time ago, the next king of Poland went to the "Mass" (Mass, Catholic church service) in St. Mary's Church, hence the name.
Grodzka Street is one of the most beautiful in Krakow. It is pedestrian, always crowded and noisy.
In addition to several beautiful buildings of the Baroque and Classicist eras, there are two architectural "pearls" of Krakow - the only monument of Romanesque architecture of St. Andrew's Church (XI century ! , This is the oldest church in Krakow) and a Baroque monument - the Church of St. St. Peter and Paul. Church of St. Peter and Paul is notable not only for its architecture, but also for the fact that in its fence from the facade are statues of all 12 apostles of Christ.
Now a few words about the second most important tourist "artery" of Krakow - Floryanska Street. It connects the Market, the part of it where the St. Mary's Church is located, with the Florian Gate.
Florian's Gate belongs to the preserved defensive structures of Krakow in the 15th century. This is the fortress gate in the tower of St. Florian, in a piece of the fortress wall that has remained since then (the northern part of the walls with towers of carpenters, carpenters and bass players).
In front of them is such a unique object as the Barbican - a round tower-bastion, which covered the gate from the outside, it was built in 1499. There is nothing left of Krakow's fortifications - everything else was dismantled in the 1930s, and the famous city gardens, the Plants, which now surround the center of Krakow with a 4-kilometer ring, were demolished on the site of the former walls. Now at the gate, on these ancient walls, local artists hang their paintings and sell them. Such a small opening.
Nearby is the building of the former city arsenal, which now houses the Museum of Fine Arts named after Prince Adam Czartoryski (leader of the Polish uprising of 1830, his collection of paintings launched a museum exhibition). The most famous painting of the museum is "The Lady with the Ermine" by Leonardo da Vinci (although zoologists say that in the arms of a lady named Cecilia Galeriani sits a simple ferret).
The museum has been operating since 1879. Floryanska people always go a lot. And these people are trying to entertain in different ways. And, of course, make money on it. What is worth, for example, the museum of instruments of torture of antiquity and the attraction with "dancing men"! In the museum you can see a variety of instruments of torture of the Middle Ages. And "men" - this, I'll tell you, is well thought out!
There is a young man standing in front of him, a hat for a meeting in front of him, a tape recorder with a cheerful melody next to it, and several peculiar paper men dancing to the music under the wall. He commands "Stop! "- They get up, " Dance! "- They continue to dance. And after all at all of it "means of management" are not visible! The secret is that 2 meters away, near the wall, there is another boy with a missing look (like - "I'm here for nothing") and with the help of invisible fishing line stretched along the wall, he quietly controls them.
Even on Floryanska Street you can often see a man dressed as Schweik with an advertisement for their bar-cafe (I do not remember his name), which serves Austro-Hungarian cuisine.
Well, it was Floryanskaya ...Let's move on!
Next to the Main Market Square - go a little to the right of St. Mary's Church, there will be the Small Market Square. The name speaks for itself - it is smaller than the "older" sister, but it is also a very beautiful town.
There is a place in Krakow called Kopets (mound) Kosciuszko. Kosciuszko Mound is an artificial structure. It was built at the end of the XIX century on one of the hills of Krakow. To do this, land was taken from places of Polish military glory - mostly from where the army of General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who fought for Polish independence in the late eighteenth century, and before that the hero of the American Revolutionary War, fought.
The top of the mound is a great observation deck, the device to my right is a "paid" telescope. You throw 1 zloty into the slot and look at the city for a minute - the visibility is excellent!
I can't help but say a few words about one man whose name is now forever associated with Krakow, although he was not born here. He comes from the town of Wadowice, 30 km from Krakow, his name was Karol Wojtyla. Yes, I mean Pope John Paul II.
Here he began his ministry to the people as a simple priest, then as archbishop of Cracow, and from here began his journey to the papal throne in the Vatican. Unfortunately, I did not have to be in Krakow in 1999 and 2002 during his visits to Poland. And I saw him in Lviv, in the summer of 2001, when he was visiting Ukraine. I saw it at a distance of 3 meters, no more, when he was driving through the streets of our city in his dad's car. He waved at me in response to my flag.
I don't have photos of him, unfortunately - such a pity ...What do I want and can say about him? Great man, great soul… How Poles loved her! It was so touching…
What else can I say about Krakow? Here is one of the best universities in Europe and the world - Jagiellonian (founded in 1364 on the model of the University of Bologna), it was the first in Eastern Europe to focus on training lawyers, and immediately taught Nicolaus Copernicus.
Stanislaw Lem, a famous Polish science fiction writer, lived in Krakow for most of his life. The first Polish newspaper was published here (1661), the first film screening was held in Poland (1896), and the first Polish car was assembled (1912).
And once (since 1815) Krakow was a "free city", the capital of the Krakow Republic - and this kind of republic lasted about 25 years.
А 2000р. Krakow was chosen as the cultural capital of Europe. And it is well deserved!
It has 13 theaters and 48 museums.
That's almost all…
I think I told you a lot about Krakow. My story is coming to an end.
And I would like to say a few more very important words - I absolutely agree with the statement, "that it is not a place that paints a person, but a person is a place" and the city of Krakow would lose a lot if it were not inhabited by very good people. These are Irena and Anthony, to whom I dedicated my story, their friend Anya and many, many others.
I am happy to think that they are my friends!
Well, that's all I managed to tell.
I called my story "KRAKOW FOREVER".
Yes, that's right: he is forever in my heart, and my heart, in a sense, has remained in Krakow forever.
I'm sorry I couldn't tell you more!
I will definitely be back, my hometown!
I PROMISE YOU! GOODBYE!
Alexander Kotlov
m. Lviv, August-October 2012
