Download The Old Jewish Town Is Once Again Bustling

The Old Jewish Town Is Once Again Bustling
2012-03-12
Once an independent town located south of Wawel, for centuries home of the Jewish
population displaced from Kraków, it is today one of the greatest tourist attractions.
The town was founded in the fourteenth century by King Casimir the Great to protect
the southern borders of the Royal Castle. Soon monumental churches were built here,
including the Church of Corpus Christi, which functioned as the parish church. It’s
probably here that the king originally intended to locate the university that he had
founded, although it was finally built close to Kraków's Main Market Square.
At the end of the fifteenth century, a Jewish quarter was created for the population
who had until then lived in Kraków. The Jewish town (oppidum iudaeorum) existed
here until the Second World War, when the Nazis crowded Kraków’s Jewish population
into a ghetto in a few lanes in Podgórze, on the other side of the Vistula. The
“pacification” campaign carried out in the ghetto in 1943 led to the extermination of
Kraków’s entire Jewish community. The former inhabitants of Kazimierz are
commemorated by the synagogues preserved here and the cemetery restored after
the devastation carried out by the Nazis with the famous tomb of Rabbi Moses
Isserles, known among Jews around the world for his miracles.
Kazimierz, a district of Kraków since the late eighteenth century, was reborn after
1989 and became a favourite location for artists, full of studios and art galleries. The
district’s atmosphere today is contributed to by popular pubs and clubs, filled with
crowds of both locals and tourists, who benefit from Kazimierz’s atmospheric hotels
and hostels, located mostly around Nowy Square and Szeroka Street.
The magic of the old Jewish town is still felt here – enchanted in the interiors,
buildings and lanes, in the synagogues and cemeteries, in the historic remains still
being discovered. The district’s unique totality consists of many contrasts: there are
churches and synagogues, Hasidim and clubbers, solemn ceremonies and the
weekend flea market in Nowy Square. To promote Kazimierz and disseminate
knowledge on its culture and history, the Jewish Culture Festival has been held here
for over twenty years. (Dorota Dziunikowska, Karnet)
Seven Synagogues
The Old Synagogue (a branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków), from
the second half of the fifteenth century, is one of the most precious monuments to
Jewish culture in Europe. It’s located on Szeroka Street, which for centuries served as
the centre of the Jewish town. The original Gothic building was rebuilt in Renaissance
style after a fire in the sixteenth century. Until the Second World War, it was the main
religious centre for the Jewish community in Kraków. The synagogue, which was
destroyed by the Nazis, was restored to its Renaissance style in the 1950s. In 1959,
the Jewish Community gave the building to the Historical Museum of the City of
Kraków, which in 1980 opened a permanent exhibition dedicated to the history and
culture of Kraków’s Jews. In the synahogue, the reconstructed sixteenth-century
bimah, the Aron Kodesh altar cabinet, and the stone cabinet for the Ner Tamid
(eternal flame), as well as some preserved historic murals, are on display. Every year
in early July, the final concert of the Jewish Culture Festival gathers thousands of
people in front of the synagogue.
On Szeroka Street, there is also the orthodox Remu’h Synagogue, still active today,
from the mid-sixteenth century – its name derives from the founder's son, the scholar
and philosopher, Rabbi Moses Isserles, known as Remu’h. Next to it is one of the
oldest Jewish cemeteries in Europe (operational from the sixteenth to the
mid-nineteenth century). Despite the damage done during the Second World War,
many Renaissance tombs have been preserved. On the grave of Moses Isserles,
regarded as a miracle-worker, Jews from around the world place cards with requests.
On the opposite side of Szeroka Street, the seventeenth-century Wolf Popper
Synagogue today houses a youth cultural centre. Open to the public, the High
Synagogue (Józefa Street), once Kraków’s richest, has a layout unusual in Poland –
with the prayer hall on the first floor, while the ground floor housed shops. In 1638
the respected Jewish merchant and banker Isaak (Ajzyk) Jakubowicz founded yet
another synagogue – named after him the Isaac Synagogue. The beautiful baroque
building houses seventeenth-century murals. Nearby, the modest Kupa
Synagogue (Warszauera Street) was built in the seventeenth century using funds
from the kehilla (local government); the murals on the ceiling date from the interwar
period. On the corner of Miodowa and Podbrzezie streets is Kazimierz’s youngest
synagogue – the reform Tempel Synagogue built in the 1860s. It was famous for its
modern celebrations organised by the maskilim, the enlightened Jews. The decorated
interiors in the Moorish style host concerts during the Jewish Culture Festival,
including very solemn inaugural performances by the world's greatest cantors.
(Dorota Dziunikowska, Karnet)
Kazimierz Market Square
The remainder of Kazimierz’s original market square is now Wolnica Square (the
name comes from Latin forum liberum, which meant it was a place permitting free
trade in meat outside slaughterhouses). In the centre stands the town hall, now the
seat of the Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum. The museum, which opened in
1910, moved here after the Second World War. It has one of Poland’s largest
collections of folk art and fascinating exotic collections. In the basement of the
building, which has been extended many times, relics of the original Gothic building
have been preserved. In the corner of the square stands the gigantic Church of
Corpus Christi – founded by King Casimir the Great as a parish church, for centuries it
was under the care of Kazimierz town council and wealthy patricians. Its construction
began around 1340, according to legend, at the site of the discovery of the
monstrance with a host, previously stolen from one of Kraków's churches. The Church
of Corpus Christi is one of the largest religious buildings in the city. It combines
different architectural styles: from the late Gothic period (the top of the façade),
through the Renaissance (bell tower), to the Baroque (side chapels). The atmospheric
interior holds a masterpiece of Polish wood carving – the seventeenth-century choir
stalls in the chancel and Tommaso Dolabella’s painting The Birth of Christ. In the
northern aisle is a mausoleum with the remains of St Stanislaus Kazimierczyk (d.
1489), parish priest and abbot of the Lateran Canons monastery housed nearby,
renowned for his miraculous powers. (Dorota Dziunikowska, Karnet)
Church on the Rock (Na Skałce)
The dominant feature of the landscape on the Vistula River in Kraków are, next to
Wawel Hill, the white towers of the Church on the Rock (Na Skałce). This place has a
prehistoric tradition and is associated primarily with the martyr’s death of the patron
saint of Poland – Bishop of Kraków, Stanislaus of Szczepanów – which he suffered in
1079 as a result of conflict with the king, Boleslaus the Brave. Soon, the reliquary of
the cult of the Bishop was transferred to Wawel Cathedral. Today's Baroque Church
on the Rock is the third church here (after the Romanesque rotunda, later rebuilt in
the Gothic style, which was destroyed during the Swedish invasion in the
mid-seventeenth century). The church is linked with the Pauline monastery. The pool
next to the church is linked with a legend – apparently the quartered remains of
Bishop Stanislaus miraculously rose up in the water was supposed to have curative
properties. Every year on the first Sunday after 8 May (i.e. after the feast of St
Stanislaus), a procession with the Bishop’s reliquary travels the route from Wawel to
Skałka. On the eve of their coronation, Polish kings also made a pilgrimage to Skałka
as penance for the acts of their predecessor. At the end of the nineteenth century, a
crypt was added beneath the church, where Poles respected for their contribution to
Polish national culture were buried; the most recent such person is Czesław Miłosz,
placed here in 2004.
Nearby stands the slender St Catherine’s Church, one of Kraków’s most beautiful
Gothic buildings. The house of worship was founded in the mid-fifteenth century by
King Casimir the Great, it seems, as his penance for killing the Bishop’s emissary for
admonishing him about his dissolute lifestyle... The Bishop’s curse probably
contributed to the church’s bad luck, as its construction was virtually never
completed, although it holds many great works of art and architecture. (Dorota
Dziunikowska, Karnet)
Museum of Municipal Engineering
The Museum of Municipal Engineering was founded by the Municipality of Kraków in
1998 in the former halls of the first Kraków tram depot. The first exhibition – Cracovie
automobile. The Beginnings of Motorisation in Kraków – was opened in 1999. Over
the following years, more halls have been adapted to museum purposes. The
museum collects exhibits illustrating the development of municipal transportation,
power, gas, the city economy and objects related to the history of technology, with
particular emphasis on the history of Kraków’s municipal engineering. Currently, the
permanent exhibition holds Kraków’s oldest public transport vehicles, technical
vehicles, and a collection of Polish cars and motorcycles. The exhibition in the horse
tram depot, the depot's oldest building, is dedicated to the history of printing in
Kraków. The whole museum exhibit today forms the impressive cultural centre in the
Św. Wawrzyńca Quarter.
Since 2008, the museum has also run a Stanisław Lem Garden of Experiences ,
located in the Lotników Polskich Park in Czyżyny. The concept of the garden is mainly
to explore the world through the personal experience of physical phenomena. A
breathing rectangle, a rotating crater, a Newton’s Cradle and an acoustic telegraph –
these are just a few of the garden’s interactive exhibits. The project’s originators –
inspired by Nuremberg’s Field of Experiences for the Senses – decided that learning
through fun would be the perfect complement to text-based approaches to
knowledge. (Dorota Dziunikowska, Karnet)
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