Bodies above the water
The figures swing in tumbling poses beneath the two arches.
Zygmunt Put — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ingo Mehling — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Igor123121 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Andrzej Otrębski — CC BY-SA 4.0
Not as a destination. But it is on the natural route between Kazimierz and Podgórze, and you will cross it if you visit Schindler's Factory, the Eagle Pharmacy or Cricoteka coming from the Jewish quarter. Stop on it for five minutes, look at the figures, and move on.
Start at Plac Nowy in Kazimierz, walk south to the river, cross the Bernatek footbridge, then Cricoteka right on the bank, then east to Ghetto Heroes Square and the Eagle Pharmacy, ending at Schindler's Factory and MOCAK in Zabłocie. A full day on foot with no transport.
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A pedestrian and cycle bridge over the Vistula linking Kazimierz with Podgórze, opened in 2010. It is named after Father Laetus Bernatek, a nineteenth-century friar who founded a hospital in Podgórze. The bridge is two crossing steel arches, beneath which hang nine acrobat figures by the sculptor Jerzy Kędziora — bodies swinging above the water in tumbling poses. That is what makes the bridge photographed more often than crossed. It has also become Kraków's love-lock bridge: visitors attach padlocks to its railings, and these are periodically removed because their weight affects the structure. Its practical value exceeds its symbolic one: it shortens the walk between Kazimierz and the museum area of Podgórze and Zabłocie to minutes, where before the detour was long. The river view is fine, especially at sunset. Always open and free. The stop is a matter of minutes within a walk between the two districts.
The figures swing in tumbling poses beneath the two arches.
Visitors attach padlocks to the railings, removed periodically for their weight.
The view over the river and both districts is finest late in the day.
Over the Vistula, between Kazimierz and Podgórze