Plac Wolnica, Kraków

Plac Wolnica is the former market square of medieval Kazimierz, created in thirteen thirty-five and once comparable in scale to Kraków’s main market square. Its former town hall now houses the Ethnographic Museum, while the square also features a medieval-Jewish commemorative plaque and Bronisław Chromy’s Three Musicians fountain.

Plac Wolnica is the open square that formed part of medieval Kazimierz’s original market place. It lies between Krakowska Street and Świętego Wawrzyńca Street, in Kraków’s Kazimierz district. When Kazimierz was established in thirteen thirty-five, this market matched Kraków’s main square in size and served the same essential purposes: trade, civic administration, and justice.

Stalls, a public weigh house, and a cloth-finishing hall once stood here as well. The old town hall facing the square is the only surviving eighteenth-century structure here. Since the end of the Second World War, it has been home to the Ethnographic Museum and its collection of folk art.

The square’s name comes from the Latin Forum Liberum, referring to the right to sell meat freely beyond the official stalls; the current name has been used since the late eighteenth century. On the museum wall, find the plaque about Jews arriving in medieval Poland. Henryk Herschel Hochman made it in nineteen oh seven; its earlier version was destroyed by the Germans during the Second World War, while this plaque was recovered from the National Museum in Warsaw. The fountain sculpture nearby, Three Musicians, was created by Bronisław Chromy in nineteen seventy.