Wieża Ratuszowa, Kraków

Wieża Ratuszowa is the seventy-metre Town Hall Tower rising from Kraków’s Main Market Square. It is the lone survivor of the former town hall, whose main building was demolished in 1820 to clear more open space in the square. What remains is Gothic: a medieval building manner shaped by vertical ambition and stone-and-brick construction.

Notice the portal above the entrance. It preserves Kraków’s coat of arms alongside Poland’s emblem, while two stone lions guard the doorway. Those lions began life at the Morstin family’s Classicist palace in Pławowice before arriving here during twentieth-century repairs.

The tower has endured far more than the disappearance of its town hall. Lightning set it ablaze in 1680, destroying its original Gothic top, clock, and bell; Piotr Beber rebuilt it a few years later with a Baroque crown. A storm in 1703 left the tower leaning fifty-five centimetres.

Beneath it, the cellars once contained the city prison and a medieval torture chamber. Today it remains one of the square’s defining landmarks and forms part of Kraków’s Historical Museum.