City Walls

The year 1241 marked the arrival of an invader who had been unknown in Europe until that date: the Tartars. Perfectly organised, fierce hordes craving for riches to be looted spread throughout southern Poland. Surrounded only by earthen embankments and wooden palisades, Kraków was unable to defend itself. Only the more strongly fortified Wawel and the massive stone Church of St Andrew provided shelter for the residents and remained untouched.

The painful experience of the three Tartar raids proved that solid fortifications were a necessity. Kraków was granted the right to build them by Prince Leszek the Black (Czarny). The construction began in 1298 and continued until the end of the 15th century. As a result, Kraków received two lines of walls. The outer, lower, wall known as the antemurale reached approximately 2.5 m (over 8 ft) high. The other, interior wall was built of stone or brick and measured up to 7 m (23 ft). The entire system was surrounded by a 6-8 m (20-26 ft) wide moat. The last stage of the construction of the defence structures was the building of the Barbican connected to the walls by a resistant corridor, the so-called “neck”.

There were seven gates leading into the walled city: Rzeźnicza (i.e. Butchers’, later Mikołajska), Grodzka, Floriańska, Sławkowska, Szewska (i.e. Shoemakers’), Wiślna, and Nowa (i.e. New). They stood at the ends of the streets radiating from the Main Market Square, and most of them received their names from those of the streets. The Nowa Gate stood at the end of Sienna Street, and Rzeźnicza – of Mikołajska. We can still see the form of Kraków’s oldest gate, Rzeźnicza, in the wall of the Convent of the Dominican Sisters "Na Gródku" from the side of the Planty garden ring. It ceased to fulfil its purpose in the 14th century, when – following the order of King Ladislaus the Elbow-High (Władysław Łokietek) – the course of Mikołajska Street was changed, and a new gate, simply called Mikołajska, was built at its end.

Gates were closed from the inside when the doors were open, and from the outside – with iron grates lowered along special rails. Traces of these are still visible in St Florian’s Gate. Every morning, the guard on duty on top of St Mary’s Tower, played the bugle call – the signal to open the gates, and in the evening – gave the signal to close them. Whoever failed to reach the city before the gates were closed was forced to seek accommodation outside the city walls.

The city’s defence line was complemented by towers, whose number increased, and with the passage of time reached 47. Since the Middle Ages the custom had developed in Europe of having the defence of the city rely on its citizens. The situation in Kraków was similar, with each guild receiving a tower into its care together with a section of the walls, which they had to defend if there was an attempted invasion. The Fowler Brotherhood was a sharpshooters’ association that made sure that Kraków craftsmen were ready to fight. It was a paramilitary organisation that trained burghers to wield arms and shoot accurately.

As Kraków did not modernise its walls, by the 17th century it already could not withstand a major siege, as was proved by the Swedish invasion and its tragic outcome. One of the main reasons behind the fall of the city in the 18th century was nothing else than the poor condition of the fortifications, with the poorest sections of society making a home in the ruined walls. The cheeky citizens even made the following couplet:

No Russians need to destroy this stone, everything here will crumble on its own;
You, the French, come on the double; come and see all this rubble.

In the beginning of the 19th century the city authorities decided to tear down the defence walls together with the gates and towers (1810-1818) as part of the modernisation and “beautification” of the city. Only due to the exceptional determination of Senator Feliks Radwański do we owe the saving of a fragment of the fortifications together with St Florian’s Gate, the Barbican, and three towers. The crowning argument used by the Senator – that the walls together with the gate fulfil important hygienic duties, protecting the city from great draughts, winds and blizzards coming from the north – carries today the touch of an anecdote... The same Radwański was the author of the idea to replace the fortifications with a public garden that came to be known as the Planty.