Kraków Gate in Wieluń

The tower that now serves as Wieluń's town-hall tower began life as a medieval town gate guarding the road to Kraków. The Kraków Gate (Brama Krakowska) is the only surviving gate of Wieluń's old walls, and since 1842 it has been part of a late-Neoclassical town hall. It outlived fires, rebuilding and the German bombing of 1 September 1939, which flattened most of the old town.

The walls of Casimir the Great

Wieluń was one of 25 towns that received masonry fortifications under King Casimir the Great. The walls went up after a town fire in 1335, gradually replacing earth-and-timber ramparts. They were about 1,200–1,300 m long and 6–6.5 m high, enclosing an old town of roughly 12 ha. They were built of local sandstone and topped with brick battlements. At first the town had only two gates – the Kalisz Gate and the Kraków Gate – and more were added later. In 2020 archaeologists located remains of the 16th-century Gaszyn Gate on ul. Śląska, one of Wieluń's four gates.

From gate to town-hall tower

The old Gothic town hall stood in the market square: first recorded in 1401, it was built of brick, roofed with tiles and measured about 17 by 28 m. In the early 19th century it was pulled down, and the town decided to attach a new town hall to the Kraków Gate, using the gate as its tower. The plan was carried out in 1842 to a design by the architect Henryk Marconi. The extension closed the old passage but gave the gate a new job – and it is the only one of Wieluń's gates to survive.

What to look for

• The tower's silhouette: the square stone base gives way higher up to octagonal storeys, each narrower than the one below.
• The clock – installed in 1940, it came from the tower of St Michael's church, which the occupying Germans demolished.
• Two eras meeting: the Gothic tower and the Neoclassical façade of the town hall facing plac Kazimierza Wielkiego.

Did you know?

• Wieluń is sometimes called "the Polish Guernica" – a Luftwaffe raid at 4:40 am on 1 September 1939 destroyed about 90% of the town centre.
• Surviving towers of the walls include Męczarnia on ul. Podwale, the ruined Prochownia next to the town hall, Skarbczyk on ul. Narutowicza near the Wieluń Land Museum, and Swawola in the green belt on ul. Palestrancka.

Tripto tip

You see the gate and town hall from outside, free of charge and at any time – the building houses the town authorities, so don't count on climbing the tower. Use it as the start of a loop along the walls: Męczarnia and Prochownia are right next door, and a walk taking in the Wieluń Land Museum takes 1–2 hours. Photograph the tower from the square, where you can see how the town hall "leans" against the medieval gate.