Krakow tourist information

The earliest known settlement on the present site of Kraków was established on Wawel hill, and dates back to the 4th century. Legend attributes the town's establishment to the mythical ruler Krak, who built it above a cave occupied by a ravenous dragon.

Before the Polish state existed, Kraków was the capital of the tribe of Vistulans, subjugated for a short period by Great Moravia. Kraków's first appearance in historical records dates back to the 8th century, and notes that the prince of the Vistulians was baptized. The first mention of the name dates to 966, when Abraham ben Jacob mentioned it as a notable commercial centre.

In 1468 the Italian humanist Filip Callimachus came to Kraków, where he worked as the teacher of the children of Kazimierz IV. In 1488 the imperial Poet Laureate and humanist Conrad Celtes founded the Sodalitas Litterarum Vistulana, a learned society based on the Roman Acadiemies. In 1489 Veit Stoss of Nuremberg finished his work on the Great Altar of the St. Mary's Church. He later also wrought a marble sarcophagus for Casimir IV. Numerous other artists, mainly from Nuremberg and Italy (Francesco Florentino, Bartholommeo Berecci, Santi Gucci, Mateo Gucci, Bernardo Morando, Giovanni Baptista di Quadro etc.), worked in Kraków. By 1500, Haller had established a printing press in the city.

In 1572, king Sigismund II died childless, and the throne passed to Sigismund III of the Swedish House of Vasa. Kraków's importance began to decline, accelerated by the pillaging of the city during the Swedish invasion, and an outbreak of plague that left 20,000 of the city's residents dead. Sigismund III moved his capital to Warsaw in 1596.

In the late 18th century, the weakened Polish state was absorbed by its more politically vigorous neighbors, Russia, the Austrian Habsburg Empire, and the Prussia. Kraków became part of the Austrian province of Galicia. Tadeusz Kosciuszko initiated a revolt, the Kosciuszko insurrection, in Kraków's market in 1794. The Prussian army put down the revolt, and looted Polish royal treasure kept in the city.

Fin-de-siecle Kraków was famously the center of Polish nationalism and culture, but the city was also becoming a modern metropolis during this period. In 1901 the city installed running water and witnessed the introduction of its first electric streetcars. (Warsaw's first electric streetcars came in 1907.) The most significant political and economic development of the first decade of the 20th century in Kraków was the creation of Greater Kraków (Wielki Kraków), the incorporation of the surrounding suburban communities into a single adminisitrative unit.

The incorporation was overseen by Juliusz Leo, the city's energetic mayor from 1904 to his death in 1918. Thanks to migration from the countryside and the fruits of incorporation from 1910 to 1915, Kraków's population doubled in just fifteen years, from approx. 91,000 to 183,000 in 1915. Russian troops besieged Kraków during the first winter of the First World War, and thousands of residents left the city for Moravia and other safer locales, generally returning in the spring and summer of 1915. During the war Kraków Legions led by Józef Pilsudski set out to fight for the liberation of Poland, in alliance with Austrian and German troops. The Austrians and Germans lost the war, but the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (1919) established the first sovereign Polish state in over a century.

Poland was partitioned again in 1939, at the outset of the Second World War, and Nazi German forces entered Kraków in September of that year. It became the capital of the General Government, a colonial authority under the leadership of Hans Frank. The occupation took a heavy toll, particularly on the city's cultural heritage. On one occasion, over 150 professors and other academics of the Jagiellonian University were summoned to a meeting, arrested and dispatched to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen. Many relics and monuments of national culture were destroyed or looted. Major concentration camps near Kraków included Plaszow and Auschwitz, to which many Polish Jews were sent. Specific events surrounding the Jewish ghetto in Kraków and the nearby concentration camps were famously portrayed in the film Schindler's List, itself based on a book by Thomas Keneally entitled Schindler's Ark.

Thanks to a manoeuvre by advancing Soviet forces, Kraków escaped complete destruction during the German withdrawal and some historic buildings and works of art were saved. After the conclusion of the war, however, the government of the People's Republic of Poland ordered the construction of the country's largest steel mill in the suburb of Nowa Huta. This is regarded as an attempt to diminish the influence of Kraków's intellectual and artistic circles by attracting the working class.

Kraków's population has quadrupled since the end of the war, and it is still regarded as the cultural capital of Poland. In 1978, UNESCO placed Kraków on the list of World Heritage Sites. In the same year, on October 16th, the city's archbishop, Karol Wojtyla, was elevated to the papacy. He was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years.