Prague & Poland

The square has been Prague's main marketplace since the 12th century. The Astronomical Clock (Orloj) was installed on the Old Town Hall in 1410, making it the oldest astronomical clock still operating anywhere in the world. The 27 pavement crosses mark where 27 Protestant leaders were executed on June 21, 1621, after the Battle of White Mountain.

Emperor Charles IV laid the foundation stone in 1357 to replace the Judith Bridge, destroyed by a flood in 1342; construction under Peter Parler's workshop finished in the early 1400s. It was the only bridge over the Vltava in Prague for over 400 years. Most of the statues were added between 1683 and 1714, beginning with St. John of Nepomuk.

Jews settled in Prague by the 10th century, and the walled ghetto here endured centuries of confinement; the district was renamed Josefov in 1850 after Emperor Joseph II, whose 1781 Edict of Tolerance eased restrictions. Between 1893 and 1913 the city demolished most of the overcrowded ghetto in a massive urban renewal, sparing the synagogues and cemetery and laying out Pařížská as a Paris-style boulevard.

Founded around 880 by Prince Bořivoj of the Přemyslid dynasty, the castle has been the seat of Bohemian dukes, kings, Holy Roman Emperors, and Czech presidents; at about 70,000 square meters it ranks among the largest ancient castle complexes in the world. St. Vitus Cathedral was begun in 1344 under Charles IV by Matthias of Arras and then Peter Parler, but was only completed in 1929, nearly 600 years later.

The street was the final stretch of the Royal Route walked by Bohemian kings to their coronations at the castle. Its house signs predate the numbering system introduced under Maria Theresa in 1770. It is named for writer Jan Neruda, who lived at the House of the Two Suns (No. 47) in the mid-19th century.

The Pinkas Synagogue was built in 1535 by the Horowitz family, making it Prague's second-oldest surviving synagogue; the memorial inscriptions were created in 1954–1959, erased under the communist regime, and restored after 1989. The cemetery was used from the 15th century (the oldest stone, Avigdor Kara's, dates to 1439) until 1787, with burials stacked up to twelve layers deep; the famed Rabbi Loew, who died in 1609, rests here.

Completed around 1270, this is the oldest active synagogue in Europe and one of Prague's earliest Gothic buildings. According to legend, the 16th-century Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel created the Golem from Vltava clay to protect the ghetto and hid its lifeless body in the synagogue's attic, which was long kept off-limits.

Built in 1868 on the site of Prague's oldest Jewish house of prayer, the Altschul, it takes its name from its Moorish Revival style inspired by Islamic Spain. The lavish interior decoration was completed in the 1880s–90s to designs by Antonín Baum and Bedřich Münzberger. Composer František Škroup, author of the Czech national anthem, was organist at the Altschul that preceded it.

In 1278 the abbot of Sedlec brought soil from Golgotha in Jerusalem, making this one of Central Europe's most desired burial grounds; the 1318 plague and the Hussite wars filled it far beyond capacity. The bones of an estimated 40,000–70,000 people accumulated in the ossuary, and in 1870 woodcarver František Rint was hired by the Schwarzenberg family to arrange them into the displays seen today.

Silver was struck here from the late 13th century, and from 1300 the royal mint at the Italian Court (Vlašský dvůr) produced the Prague groschen, one of medieval Europe's hardest currencies. At its peak Kutná Hora was the second-most important city of Bohemia after Prague and financed the kingdom's rulers. The historic center was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1995.

Construction began in 1388 to designs from the Parler workshop (Johann Parler, son of Peter Parler of St. Vitus fame), funded not by the church but by the town's silver miners, who dedicated it to St. Barbara, their patron saint. Work stopped whenever the silver ran out, and the cathedral was only finally completed in 1905. It joined the UNESCO World Heritage list with the town in 1995.

Founded in the 10th century, Vyšehrad is tied to the legend of Princess Libuše, who prophesied Prague's glory from this rock; King Vratislav II made it his royal seat in the 1070s. Charles IV later required coronation processions to start here. The basilica was rebuilt in neo-Gothic style in 1885–1903, and the adjacent Slavín cemetery became the national burial ground for Czech greats.

Slovanský ostrov (Slavic Island) took shape in the Vltava in the 18th century and became Prague's social hub after the Žofín palace was built in the 1830s, hosting concerts by Berlioz and Liszt and the first Slavic Congress in 1848. Boat and pedal-boat rentals from the island's edge have been a Prague summer tradition for generations.

After John Lennon's murder in 1980, this wall of the Knights of Malta became a spontaneous shrine where young Czechs painted Beatles lyrics and calls for freedom; communist police repeatedly whitewashed it, and the graffiti always returned, making it a symbol of peaceful resistance before 1989. The wall belongs to the Sovereign Order of Malta, which continues to tolerate the tradition.

Letná plain hosted coronation festivities and military parades for centuries. From 1955 to 1962 it held the world's largest Stalin monument, a 30-meter granite colossus dynamited after de-Stalinization; the kinetic Metronome sculpture has stood on its plinth since 1991. In November 1989, some 750,000 people gathered on Letná during the Velvet Revolution demonstrations.

Table salt has been mined at Wieliczka since the 13th century, making it one of the world's oldest continuously worked mines; over 700 years miners cut some 300 km of tunnels on nine levels. St. Kinga's Chapel was carved from a single salt chamber starting in the 1890s. Wieliczka was on UNESCO's original World Heritage list of 12 sites in 1978.

Wawel was the center of Polish power from the 11th century until the capital moved to Warsaw in 1596; kings were crowned in the cathedral from 1320 onward, and its Sigismund Bell was cast in 1520. King Sigismund I rebuilt the castle in the early 1500s with Italian architects. Legend holds the cave below housed the Wawel Dragon; Bronisław Chromy's fire-breathing dragon statue has guarded the cave mouth since 1972.

The square was laid out in 1257 when Kraków received its charter, and at roughly 200 by 200 meters it is the largest medieval town square in Europe. Veit Stoss carved the basilica's monumental altarpiece between 1477 and 1489. The interrupted hejnał commemorates a legendary trumpeter said to have been shot in the throat while warning the city of the Mongol attack of 1241.

Kazimierz was founded as a separate royal town by King Casimir the Great in 1335, and Kraków's Jews were resettled here from 1495, making it one of Europe's most important Jewish centers. The Remuh Synagogue was founded in 1553 in honor of Rabbi Moses Isserles ('Remuh', d. 1572). The Old Jewish Cemetery, in use to about 1800, was devastated under Nazi occupation and partly restored after the war.

The Nazis established the Kraków ghetto in Podgórze in March 1941, and Plac Zgody became the assembly point for deportations to Bełżec in 1942, and for the ghetto's final liquidation on March 13–14, 1943. Pharmacist Tadeusz Pankiewicz described the square strewn with furniture abandoned by the deported. The Empty Chairs memorial, unveiled in December 2005, turned that image into 70 sculpted chairs.

Tadeusz Pankiewicz was the only non-Jewish Pole permitted to live and work inside the Kraków ghetto from 1941 to 1943, and his pharmacy became a lifeline — dispensing free medicines, passing information, and offering shelter during deportations. Yad Vashem recognized him as Righteous Among the Nations in 1983, and the pharmacy is now a branch of the Museum of Kraków.

When the ghetto was created in March 1941, some 15,000–17,000 Jews were forced into Podgórze, enclosed by walls whose segments were cynically modeled on matzevot. The ghetto was emptied through deportations in 1942 and liquidated in March 1943, with survivors sent to the Płaszów camp. The plaque at Lwowska 29 commemorates those who lived, suffered and perished here.

German industrialist Oskar Schindler ran the Emalia factory at Lipowa 4 from 1939, employing Jewish workers from the ghetto and later from the Płaszów camp, shielding them from deportation. In late 1944 he moved roughly 1,200 workers — the famous 'Schindler's list' — to Brünnlitz, saving them from extermination. The museum opened in the factory's administration building in June 2010.

POLIN opened its building in April 2013 and its core exhibition in October 2014, on ground that before the war was the Jewish district of Muranów and during the war lay at the heart of the ghetto. In 2016 it became the first Polish museum to win the European Museum of the Year Award.

The monument was unveiled on April 19, 1948, the fifth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, amid the rubble of the destroyed ghetto. Rapoport used labradorite stone reportedly ordered by the Nazis for their own victory monuments. On December 7, 1970, Chancellor Willy Brandt spontaneously knelt here in silence — the 'Kniefall von Warschau'.

From this transfer point roughly 300,000 Warsaw Jews were deported, mostly to Treblinka, during the Grossaktion between July 22 and September 1942. Miła 18 was the headquarters bunker of the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) during the 1943 uprising; on May 8, 1943, commander Mordechai Anielewicz and dozens of fighters died there rather than surrender.

After the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the Germans systematically dynamited the Old Town, destroying around 85–90 percent of it. Between 1945 and the mid-1950s Poles rebuilt it using surviving plans, photographs and the 18th-century vedute painted by Bernardo Bellotto (Canaletto); the Royal Castle was reconstructed 1971–1984. UNESCO inscribed the Old Town in 1980 as an exceptional example of near-total reconstruction.

Ostrów Mazowiecka received town rights in 1434 and by the late 1930s roughly half its population was Jewish, sustaining synagogues, schools and a lively market trade. On November 11, 1939, the Germans shot around 500 of the town's Jews in one of the first mass executions of Jews in occupied Poland; the community never returned. The museum occupies the house of the family of Maria Pilecka, wife of Witold Pilecki, the resistance hero who volunteered for Auschwitz.

Treblinka II operated from July 1942 to August 1943 as a pure extermination camp of Operation Reinhard; in barely a year the Germans murdered an estimated 800,000 or more Jews here, most from Warsaw and central Poland. After a prisoner revolt on August 2, 1943, the camp was dismantled and plowed under to hide the crime. The memorial by Franciszek Duszeńko and Adam Haupt was unveiled in 1964.

The mermaid has appeared on Warsaw's seals since the Middle Ages; legend says she swam up the Vistula and vowed to defend the city. This riverside bronze by Ludwika Nitschowa was unveiled in 1939, modeled on Krystyna Krahelska, a poet and Home Army courier who died in the first days of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

Hala Koszyki was built in 1906–1908 to a design by Juliusz Dzierżanowski as a city market hall, notable for its Art Nouveau styling and steel structure. Damaged in World War II and used for decades as mundane retail space, it reopened in October 2016 after a careful reconstruction that preserved the historic facade and ironwork.

The Tomb was dedicated on November 2, 1925, beneath the arcades of the Saxon Palace. The Germans blew up the palace in December 1944 after the Warsaw Uprising, and the surviving arcade fragment was deliberately kept as the tomb — the only piece of the palace still standing. The Saxon Garden, opened in 1727, was one of the world's first public parks.