Wawel Cathedral Collegium Maius

The Old Town is no longer guarded by defensive walls and moats. These have been replaced by the city park, called Planty, which surrounds the Old Town in a 4-km-long belt. One remnant of the old fortifications is Floriańska Gate – start of the Royal Road to Wawel Castle – and the Barbican beyond has also been preserved. This 15th century historic building is the largest and best-preserved Gothic defense architecture of its kind in Europe. A royal hill and a Jewish town Wawel, the seat of kings and bishops, sits on a limestone hill on the Vistula. Wawel cathedral has witnessed the most important religious and state ceremonies and nearly all of Poland’s monarchs are buried in the crypts below. Among the Renaissance castle’s most worthwhile sights are the Royal Chambers, featuring Flemish tapestries from the 16th and 17th centuries, and the Crown Treasury, with its 13th century coronation sword, called Szczerbiec. Cracow’s Kazimierz district, established in the 14th century by King Kazimierz the Great, used to be a separate town where Christianity and Judaism coexisted for nearly five centuries. Jews began settling in Kazimierz in the late 15th century. At the center of today’s Kazimierz is Szeroka Street, lined with Jewish cafés and restaurants, and the Old Synagogue – Europe’s oldest preserved synagogue and one of its most valuable. Inside is an exposition from the Ethnographic Museum, The History and Culture of Cracow’s Jews.