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''Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.''
Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel Prize winner for literature 1996, resident of Krakow.
Krakow has a thousand-year history, and until the seventeenth century it was the capital of Poland. It was, and still is, a very cosmopolitan city, attracting many artists and scholars. The city has always been a centre of Catholicism, witness the number of churches; His Holiness, the late Pope John Paul II, was bishop here. Our tour of the city spans the ages - the late-medieval merchants' Cloth Hall, the renaissance Royal Castle at Wawel, the gothic St Mary's Basilica. We also look at the Czartoryski Collection in the National Museum, which has an important holding of Old Masters.
Krakow had a large Jewish population before the Second World War, living in what was then a separate city, Kazimierz. Since the 1980s this district has experienced a remarkable revival and become very fashionable, so that the formerly deserted and abandoned narrow alleyways and tenements now house apartments, cafes and shops. It was in Kazimierz that Stephen Spielberg filmed Schindler's List. For all interested guests we also offer a tour to the memorial at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
By the end of the Second World War, nearly eighty-five per cent of Warsaw lay in ruins. It is to the credit of the Communist authorities that they rebuilt the Old Town. The city spans the Vistula River, and most of the historic sights are situated on the left bank, while on the right bank is the trendy Praga district. Our days in the city include a walking tour of the Old Town, a visit to the Royal Castle, the Wilanow Palace, and an evening of theatre. |
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