Bazylika Wniebowzięcia Najświętszej Maryi Panny, Kraków

St Mary’s Basilica is the great Roman Catholic parish church at Mariacki Square, beside the Main Market Square. Brick Gothic—the medieval Gothic tradition built chiefly in brick—gives this church its character. Notice the façade’s two towers: the taller Hejnał tower rises to eighty-two metres, while the other, built as the church’s bell tower, reaches sixty-nine metres.

From the taller tower, the Hejnał Mariacki sounds every hour, all year round. The tune ends suddenly; local legend connects that break with a thirteenth-century trumpeter killed while warning Kraków of a Mongol attack. A stone church was founded here in twelve twenty-one or twelve twenty-two, then destroyed during the Mongol invasions.

Its Gothic successor went up between twelve ninety and thirteen hundred, and the church was rebuilt again between thirteen fifty-five and thirteen sixty-five. At the end of the fifteenth century, it received Veit Stoss’s extraordinary late-Gothic wooden altarpiece. The later interior also carries monumental painted decoration designed by Jan Matejko, with stained glass by Stanisław Wyspiański and Józef Mehoffer. Since nineteen seventy-eight, the basilica has formed part of Kraków’s UNESCO-listed historic centre.