Plac Nowy Targ, Wrocław

Plac Nowy Targ is one of Wrocław’s three historic market squares. First mentioned in 1266, it was rebuilt after devastating wartime destruction and reshaped again in 2024 with extensive new planting. Its lost Neptune fountain, nicknamed “Pitchfork George,” has an original sculpture rediscovered near Syców in 2022.

Plac Nowy Targ is one of Wrocław’s three surviving historic market squares, alongside the Market Square and Salt Market Square. Its story reaches back to a first written mention in 1266, although the space took its present shape about a century later. The settlement around this square already had its own charter, fields and woodland in 1214—an unexpectedly early beginning for this corner of the Old Town.

Notice the open centre of the square. A well stood there from 1592; in 1732 it became a Neptune fountain. Local residents gave Neptune the wonderfully informal nickname Gabeljürgen, or “Pitchfork George.”

The fountain disappeared after 1945, but the original Neptune sculpture turned up in 2022 in Wielowieś, near Syców. The buildings around you also tell a sharp twentieth-century story. Most of the square was destroyed in the final weeks of the Second World War.

Only the former administrative building, now a City Hall branch, and a tenement at the Jodłowa Street corner remained. Housing built during the 1950s and 1960s replaced much of what was lost. The newest redesign finished in July 2024, bringing more than 170 trees, ferns, grasses and other planting into a square that had long been dominated by hard paving.