Old towns & squares

Great Market Square in Zamość

The Great Market Square in Zamość is one of the finest Renaissance urban spaces in Europe: a 100 × 100 m square designed as part of a town founded in 1580 by Hetman Jan Zamoyski. In 1992 the square, together with the Old Town, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and the city earned the nicknames "town of arcades" and "Padua of the north".

The town hall with its fan-shaped stairs

The dominant feature of the square is the town hall with a 52-metre tower. It received its present shape in the second half of the 18th century, when the famous fan stairs were built — turned into a stage for the Zamość Theatre Summer in summertime. The building stands neither in the middle of the square nor in the middle of the frontage — a deliberate emphasis of the precedence of Ordynat Zamoyski over the mayor. The façade looks symmetrical, yet its left side is 130 cm wider. On summer noons a trumpeter plays the call towards three directions only — according to tradition, the hetman did not want to greet Kraków, where the Vasa king resided.

Armenian townhouses and the Morando House

Three frontages hold eight townhouses each, with arcaded ground floors; the northern one has six, since the town hall's tower took two plots. Many houses retain Renaissance portals, wooden ceilings and polychromes. Four colourful Armenian townhouses — Wilczkowska, Rudomiczowska, Pod Aniołem and Pod Małżeństwem — house the Zamość Museum. On the southern frontage stands the Morando townhouse, designed by Bernardo Morando for his own family.

In practice

The square is the natural starting point for the Old Town: coffee under the arcades, museum visits and a walk through a city built to a Renaissance ideal.