Market Square in Skała

In the middle of the square stands an unusual monument: a bronze group – a duke, nuns, a mounted retinue – frozen at the moment the town was born. Skała is one of the oldest towns in Lesser Poland, and its market square with radiating streets has kept its medieval layout. For most visitors it is just a stop on the way to Ojców, which is a pity – the history of this square is more interesting than its quiet look suggests.

History: a town of the Poor Clares

The town charter was issued on 10 November 1267 by Duke Bolesław the Chaste, but the driving force was his sister Salomea, a Poor Clare nun later beatified, who had brought the sisters to nearby Grodzisko. She chose Ditmar Wolk, formerly the mayor of Kraków, to lay out the town. Skała was a convent town on the route from Kraków to Silesia; a customs post is recorded here as early as 1257, and beer from Skała was shipped to Kraków in 1424.

On the night of 4–5 March 1863, January Uprising insurgents under Marian Langiewicz attacked Russian troops camped in the local cemetery and drove them out after a three-hour fight. A soldiers' song remembers it with a line promising the Russians would long recall the thrashing they got "in Skała". In 1870 Skała lost its town rights and regained them only in 1987.

What to see

• The town-founding monument – a bronze group on a stone base, placed on the square in 2012, the 800th anniversary of Blessed Salomea's birth and the 745th of the town.
• The statue of St Florian from 1800 – painted, under a small canopy, inside a wrought-iron fence.
• The plaque marking the restoration of town rights and the low frontage of pastel-coloured houses.
• St Nicholas' Church – a Baroque church a few hundred metres from the square.

Tripto tip

You can walk around the square in 20–30 minutes. Skała is close to the Hermitage of Blessed Salomea in Grodzisko (about 2 km) and to Ojców, so it is a good place to start a trip in the Jura uplands. Buses run from Kraków to the square (including city line 267 from Krowodrza Górka), so you can come without a car.