District of Wesoła

The name of this part of the city is slowly going out of use, as it is being forgotten even by locals, yet it is worth remembering. Walking along Kopernika Street, you pass four churches, classicist city residences, and Poland’s oldest botanical garden.

Already in the Middle Ages today’s Kopernika Street was a fragment of an important route leading via Mogiła towards Sandomierz, and further into Ruthenia. After chartering the city and the construction of the defence walls in the 13th and 14th centuries, it was treated as the extension of Mikołajska Street, with the name referring to both for many decades. This, however, did not change the fact that together with a small settlement it found itself out of the city boundaries.

The year 1639 spelt a major change for the suburb, as a magnate, wife of the Great Chancellor of the Crown, Katarzyna Zamoyska established the Wesoła iurisdictio here. As such, it was not subject to the city authorities, but only to the control of the aristocratic family which it belonged to. Like all the other private jurisdictions, Wesoła’s independence was lost to the Austrian government at the beginning of the 19th century. Although the main streets of the former independent borough received the name of Mikołaj Kopernik as early as 1858, the name “Wesoła” remained long in use. After the liquidation of the land registry districts in 1954, the name is slowly becoming forgotten.

Today’s street is associated primarily with hospitals, including those of the university, which have been built here since the 1780s. Of interest is the classicist manor house at No. 7 that in the 1820s was the seat of the Masonic Lodge, and today houses the Medical College of the Jagiellonian University.

Besides having the oldest – St Nicholas’ – and the youngest on the street – Jesuit – of the city’s churches, Kopernika Street boasts two other baroque churches. The older – St Lazarus – completed after decades of construction in 1683, is known for its rare, uniform furnishing made in black Dębnik marble. Its façade is decorated with the figures of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary (patron of the church), and St John and Teresa of Ávila. The adjacent monastery houses one of the wards of the University Hospital.

The other baroque church is that of St Theresa, built in 1717-1730 on the plan of the Greek (that is isosceles) cross, which can be found nowhere else in Kraków. The facade is crowned with a triangular tympanum in the late baroque style of the Roman type, and features an artistic portal of black marble. Worth paying attention to inside is the geometric stucco decoration of the barrel vaulting. A marble column devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary (1668) stands in the courtyard. The convent of the Discalced Carmelite nuns connected to the church was the scene of the tragic history of the deranged nun Barbara Ubryk, who was imprisoned in her cell for over 20 years, until this particular “skeleton” was released from the convent’s “cupboard” in 1869.

Before leaving Kopernika Street, it is worthwhile visiting the botanical garden established there in 1783, on the premises of what at that time was an estate of the Princes Czartoryski. After refurbishing, their “petit palace” was turned into an Astronomical Observatory. Despite countless reconstructions, the building has preserved its neo-classicist character. Today, it houses the Department of Climatology of the Jagiellonian University and the Botanical Museum.