Kleparz

The settlement in Kleparz originated around the St Florian's church towards the end of the 12th century at the time when the church was founded. It was probably destroyed by the Tartar raids in the 13th century. Reborn, it became the foundation for the town which received its charter on the basis of a privilege from King Casimir the Great (Kazimierz Wielki) in 1366. Both in the charter and official documents from the 14th and 15th centuries, the town is known as Florencja – Florence – a name derived from the patron saint of the church. The place name Kleparz did not appear until later.

Lack of defensive walls meant that Kleparz was frequently looted by enemy armies, since Kraków was always in the greatest danger of attack from the North, due to the easier access and lack of natural barriers. From time to time it was even the case that the people of Kraków would burn Kleparz down so that the enemy could not hide in its buildings during an attack or siege. Despite these inconveniences, the town continued to grow and could boast as many as four Gothic churches, of which only St Florian’s has survived. The definitive end to the development of Kleparz came with the Swedish invasion of 1655, when, all the suburbs were burnt down on the order of Grand Commander Stefan Czarniecki who commanded the defence of Kraków...

As any self-respecting town, Kleparz had its market square laid out soon after the charter was granted. Until the late 1870s, it was hardly smaller in size than the Main Square. After Kraków swallowed up Kleparz in 1791, the fair lost its significance, even though it was the site of great horse markets, famous throughout Galicia. Soon the town hall that beforehand had stood alone in the centre of the square – in the place of today’s school at Rynek Kleparski 18 – was demolished.

The urban planners of the 1860s divided the Market Square of Kleparz into two areas: the marketplace retaining its previous function, which it still holds to this day as Stary Kleparz, and the elegant area that later acquired the name of Matejki Square. The idea did not materialise until 1877, when construction work began on the neo-Gothic municipal school building designed by Maciej Moraczewski and standing in pl. Matejki 11, and on the Academy of Fine Arts designed by the same architect in 1879. Ten years later, the railway headquarters standing beside it was completed.

While such modern and elegant architecture was developed around pl Matejki, the open-air market, that is today’s Rynek Kleparski, was still surrounded by little houses with taverns of dubious character that usually played the role of inns. The situation began to change towards the end of the 1890s, when a few, new, 3-storey high townhouses were built on the western wall. The last single-storey house in the area, standing at pl. Matejki 2, only gave way to the new architecture as late as 1939.