Mikołaj Zyblikiewicz, Kraków

This bronze bust on Plac Wszystkich Świętych commemorates Mikołaj Zyblikiewicz, Kraków’s twice-elected city president, lawyer and political reformer. Created in 1887 to Walery Gadomski’s design, it honours the man who advanced the restoration of the Cloth Hall and helped begin Wawel Castle’s rescue from military use.

The bronze bust on Plac Wszystkich Świętych portrays Mikołaj Zyblikiewicz, the Kraków mayor whose monument stands before City Hall. It was made in 1887 to a design by Walery Gadomski; removed in 1954, it returned here in 1985. Zyblikiewicz was born in 1823 and became both a lawyer and a politician of Ruthenian background.

After qualifying as an advocate in Kraków in 1855, he opened a practice on Kopernika Street and fought the Austrian authorities’ imposition of German in Polish offices and courts. He also joined efforts to restore Polish as a language of instruction at the Jagiellonian University. Elected city president in 1874 and again in 1880, he reshaped a growing Kraków: municipal administration was reorganised, staff pay rose, and the city gained schools, a fire station and a municipal slaughterhouse.

He set the restoration of the Cloth Hall in motion in 1877, creating the museum upstairs, and pressed Emperor Franz Joseph the First to approve the rescue of Wawel Castle from its military use. He died of pneumonia in Kraków in 1887 and lies beneath an obelisk in Rakowicki Cemetery.