Kazimierz, Kraków

For almost five hundred years Kazimierz was not a district of Kraków but a separate town — with its own market square, town hall and walls, cut off from Kraków by a branch of the Vistula. King Casimir the Great founded it on 27 February 1335 and gave it his name. From the late 15th century its north-eastern part was the Jewish quarter, and for centuries Jewish and Christian cultures lived side by side here. Today it is one of the most fascinating parts of Kraków, with seven surviving synagogues, Gothic basilicas, the Skałka sanctuary and the bars around Plac Nowy.

History: a royal town on an island

Kazimierz originally stood on a marshy island between the Vistula and a branch of the river that no longer exists, the Old Vistula. Founded under Magdeburg town law, it covered about 50 hectares — only a little less than Kraków at the time — and received trading privileges, including the right to a weekly Friday market. Monumental churches soon went up, Corpus Christi and St Catherine's, and the town was enclosed by walls with four gates. Its heart was a square market place — today's Wolnica Square is part of it — with a town hall in the middle. Kazimierz lost its independence and was merged into Kraków in 1800; the bed of the Old Vistula was filled in at the end of the 19th century and became today's Dietla Street with its green strip.

Jewish Kazimierz

In 1495 King John I Albert ordered Kraków's Jews to move to the former village of Bawół in the eastern part of Kazimierz. This created the "Jewish town" (oppidum iudaeorum), separated by a wall, with its centre on Szeroka Street. For centuries it was one of the most important centres of Jewish culture in Europe, associated with scholars such as Rabbi Moses Isserles. The walls of the quarter were demolished in 1822. During the Second World War the German occupiers expelled the residents and confined the rest of the community in the ghetto in Podgórze, across the river; the liquidation of the ghetto in March 1943 meant the murder of almost all of Kraków's Jews.

What to see

• Synagogues: the Old Synagogue (15th century, now a branch of the Museum of Kraków), Remuh (1553 — the only one in regular Orthodox use), the High Synagogue, Popper (1620), Kupa (1643), Isaac (1644) and Tempel (1862).
• The Remuh Cemetery — one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Poland and Europe, with graves from the mid-16th to the mid-19th century.
• Wolnica Square with Kazimierz's former town hall, now the Ethnographic Museum.
• The Gothic basilicas of Corpus Christi and St Catherine, and Skałka — the sanctuary of St Stanislaus with its National Pantheon.
• Fragments of the medieval walls, the mikveh (ritual bath) on Szeroka Street and the former poultry slaughterhouse on Plac Nowy, now the centre of the district's bar scene.

Did you know?

• In 1993 Steven Spielberg shot large parts of "Schindler's List" here — even though the real events took place mainly in Podgórze. Szeroka Street stood in for, among other places, Plac Zgody in the ghetto.
• Since 1988 the Jewish Culture Festival has been held here at the end of June, with its main concert on Szeroka Street.
• Together with the Old Town, Kazimierz has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1978, and in 2022 the city created the Kazimierz and Stradom Cultural Park (over 140 hectares), which restricts advertising, restaurant terraces and electric sightseeing carts.

Tripto tip

Allow 2–3 hours for a first walk: start on Wolnica Square, walk along Józefa and Szeroka streets, visit the Old Synagogue and the Remuh Cemetery, then head down to the Vistula and Skałka. Synagogues and cemeteries are religious sites — in active synagogues men are usually asked to cover their heads, and some sites may be closed on the Sabbath (from Friday evening to Saturday evening). Check opening hours and tickets for each synagogue and museum separately. In the evening the area around Plac Nowy is loud and crowded — come in the morning for quiet photos.