Plac Mariacki, Kraków

Plac Mariacki is the small square beside Kraków’s Main Market Square, with St Mary’s Basilica at its centre. The pale paving beneath you marks ground that was once the parish cemetery serving the church. That cemetery disappeared after eighteen oh two, and the square was created in its place.

At the southern end, the fountain-monument of a scholar is a gift from Kraków’s craftspeople, made in nineteen fifty-eight. Jan Budziło designed the fountain, while Franciszek Kalfas made its figure. It is an enlarged version of a prophet from the frame around the central shrine of Veit Stoss’s great altar inside St Mary’s.

The surrounding houses hold further layers of the city’s past. House number three, the Hipolit House, takes its name from an Italian merchant family and preserves Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque doorways, painted ceilings, stucco and eighteenth-century wall paintings. At number nine, a plaque recalls Stanisław Wyspiański, who lived and wrote here; among the works he created in this house were The Wedding and Legion. This compact square is therefore shaped by burial ground, church, craft, art and literature all at once.