selenak

The working part of my time in Poland starts on Friday, with some preliminaries happening today on Thursday, so we walked as much as we could through the city at the river Weichsel, Poland's old capital. With several origin stories, but I must say the one which charmed me most was the one about the dragon. Who was menacing the area until a brave shoemaker named Krak tricked it into eating a sheep stuffed with sulfur, which made the dragon with more fire in its belly than it was comfortable with, which made it want to quench its thirst at the river, which in turn made it drink so much it exploded. Krak became king and the city was named after him.

I'm told one does not truly deserve to be a citizen of Poland unless one has visited ~~Mecca~~ the Wawel at least once in one's life. *eyes Polish lj friends* Certainly a lot of people seem to believe it, because there were ever so many classes of children around, and not just because of the little mechanical dragon they keep in the cave on the foot of the castle. Which I didn't get to see, due to lack of time. The Wawel, oh fellow foreigners, is a chalk rock on which resides a castle and a cathedral, where the Polish kings pre-partition of Poland used to live and get crowned. Though they got crowned there for some time after as well, though the capital had moved to Warsaw. This would be the castle in question:

Though medieval in origin, it's very imprinted by the Renaissance, as you can see from the architecture of the courtyard:

No photography allowed inside the castle rooms, I'm afraid. Let's have a look at the cathedral (also no photography inside allowed, except for the belltower, about which more in a moment) instead, where the kings were crowned:

The Sigismund bell, the biggest one in the belltower, can only be rung by six men at the same time, so the guide book says, and is the biggest in Poland. So up we went, and admired:

Next we went to visit the old Jewish Quarter, which if you've watched Schindler's List you might be familiar with; pre-WWII, it was the second largest Jewish quarter in a European city, after Vienna. The old synagogue has an exhibition about Jewish culture and history, but the one which sticks most to mind is the smallest synagogue of the quarter, the Remuh Synagogue, named after Rabbi "Remuh" Moses Isserle who preached there and who is buried in the old Jewish cemetery next to it. This one isn't a museum but a synagogue where services are still held, and seeing proof of continuation and life was important to us after the previous day.

Also not on camera for obvious reasons is another highlight, the Leonardo they have at the Czartoryski-Museum, along with a big and varied collection that includes swords, Renaissance paintings, Etruscan sculpture and Egyptian mummies. And, famously, The Lady with a Hermelin by Leonardo da Vinci, a painting which honestly spoke to me much more than the famous Mona Lisa, not least because it's actually possible to watch it without a thousand people standing in front of it all the time. (No offense to the Louvre.) The model was Cecilia Gallerani, the mistress of Milan's duke Ludovico Sforza.

Now, as in every Polish city we've visited, all roads lead to the Rynek, whether it's the one through the Florian Gate:

Or the one from coming from the Wawel:

The central building in the middle of the Rynek was called Venetian, and I can see why:

There are also a lot of street artists, like this puppeteer who specalizes in rock stars:

But the undisputed star of the Rynek is the St. Mary's Church. Not so much for the outside, though that's impressive enough:

But for the inside. Which is, hands down, among the many beautiful churches I've seen in Poland the most beautiful. Have a look or a thousand:

There is a magnificent altar by Veit Stoß there, who lived in Krakow for decades but hails from Franconia like myself; a citizen of Nuremberg (who also gave us Bambergers a beautiful altar, so I sort of grew up with his art). Here's a true masterpiece: