The Stoss altar
Twelve carved years, back from Nazi looting.
Pgkos — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Unknown authorUnknown author — Public domain · Rj1979 — Public domain · Magen — CC BY-SA 4.0
St. Mary's is Krakow's Gothic jewel: her unequal towers (the legend: two builder brothers rivalled until one killed the other — the knife genuinely hangs in the Sukiennice) — her interior a colour detonation: a star-blue ceiling and flowered walls Matejko and his school painted across the Gothic astonishment. Her treasure is the Veit Stoss altarpiece: the world's largest Gothic wooden altar (1489) — twelve carving years of the Virgin's life in near-life-size figures, its wings opened daily (11:50) as an attended rite — looted by the Nazis and returned in triumph as national symbol. Her taller tower (54 metres, 271 steps) climbs to the trumpeter's room where the hejnał plays live above your head with the whole Rynek below — a separate seasonal tower ticket worth its race.
Twelve carved years, back from Nazi looting.
Matejko's blue over the Gothic.
The hejnał live above your head.
Plac Mariacki 5, 31-042 Krakow
The Little Market SquareA square in the old town directly behind St Mary's Church, less than a hundred m1 minute walk4.8
The Main Square (Rynek Główny)The Rynek is medieval Europe's greatest square: two hundred metres by the same, 2 minutes walk4.7
Museum of Pharmacy, KrakówA museum of the Jagiellonian University in a fifteenth-century house on Floriańs2 minutes walk4.8
Jan Matejko HouseThe house of the painter Jan Matejko on Floriańska street in the old town, where3 minutes walk4.7
The Szołayski HouseA nineteenth-century town house on Plac Szczepański in Kraków, a branch of the N4 minutes walk4.7The dull history: built in two phases for two jobs — the taller as the city's watchtower (hence higher), the lower for the bells. The juicy legend won: the rival brothers and the hanging knife — and Krakow tells the second with a smile, showing the knife as proof.