Plac Dominikański, Kraków

Plac Dominikański is the small Old Town square between Grodzka Street, Dominikańska Street, and the Dominican church. Before Kraków received its charter, this was a marketplace. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a substantial settlement gathered around the principal Romanesque Church of the Holy Trinity, and some of Kraków’s earliest forms of local self-government developed here.

The decisive change came in 1222. Bishop Iwo Odrowąż transferred the parish to St Mary’s Church and installed Dominican friars brought from Bologna in its place. The square’s present name only became established in the eighteen-seventies; before that, people called this stretch Szeroka, or Broad Street.

On house number six, find the memorial plaque for Edmund Wasilewski, the first poet to celebrate Kraków’s charms. Across at the Grodzka Street corner, house number one marks the birthplace of Helena Modrzejewska; its commemorative plaque was made by Wiesław Łabędzki. This compact space holds a surprising sequence: market, early civic community, parish church, Dominican foundation, and two literary and theatrical memories pressed into the surrounding façades.