Mały Rynek, Kraków

Mały Rynek is the small rectangular market square behind St Mary’s Basilica, created east of the Main Market Square as Kraków’s supporting marketplace. At about a third of a hectare—roughly one hundred and ten by thirty metres—it feels like a narrow urban room, bounded by Mikołajska Street and Sienna Street. Its business was once far tougher than today’s paving suggests.

Meat was sold here, then second-hand goods joined the trade from the sixteenth century; butcher stalls occupied the square until their final removal in eighteen twenty. A charitable kitchen also operated here. The square acquired names reflecting those trades, including the Butchers’ Market in the later eighteenth century.

In fifteen thirty-nine, eighty-year-old Katarzyna Weiglowa was burned here for abandoning Catholicism. Notice the illuminated fountain in the paving. Until two thousand seven, this surface functioned largely as car parking and a taxi rank.

A redesign for the seven hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Kraków’s charter restored historic cobbles, added lamps and benches, sharply reduced vehicles, and made this a companion venue for exhibitions, performances and civic events. At number six, the Szober House marks where Poland’s first newspaper, Merkuriusz Polski, was printed in sixteen sixty-one.