Old Town Market Square in Toruń

The Old Town Market Square is the oldest part of Toruń and the city’s main square, measuring 109 × 104 metres. As early as the 13th century cloth halls, bread benches, the town scale, a court and a market tower operated here; the whole old-town complex containing the square is on the UNESCO list.

The town hall — Gothic with a 17th-century addition

At the end of the 14th century the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order permitted the building of a town hall — a quadrangle with a courtyard arose, and the existing tower was raised from 23 to 40 metres and incorporated into the building. After World War II the town hall housed the District Museum with collections of medieval art and Toruń crafts; in season the tower is open to visitors from Tuesday to Sunday, and from the top you can see the entire old town and the Vistula.

Townhouses with stories

On the square stand: the Under the Star townhouse (Rynek 35) with a Baroque facade and Poland’s first museum of Far Eastern art; the Artus Court of 1891, raised on the site of the older one where the Second Peace of Thorn was signed; the Meisner Palace of 1739, a former mayor’s residence. At number 33 was born in 1755 Samuel Thomas Soemmerring, one of the era’s foremost anatomists, and in the Three Crowns house the widow of Sobieski and Tsar Peter the Great were guests.

Filuś and the everyday square

In the north-eastern corner stands, since 2005, the monument to the dog Filuś with a bowler hat — a work by Zbigniew Lengren, a Toruń cartoonist. Touching the bowler is said to bring luck in exams.