Plac Wolnica in Kraków

Plac Wolnica is a square in Kraków's Kazimierz, bounded by Krakowska and św. Wawrzyńca streets. It is part of the original market square of the town of Kazimierz.

The former market square of Kazimierz

The market square was laid out in 1335 when the town was chartered. It once matched Kraków's Main Market Square in size: trade took place here, and there stood the town hall with the authorities of Kazimierz, as well as stalls, a weigh house and a cloth-shearing house. The present name comes from the Latin Forum liberum, that is the right of free trade in meat outside the stalls, and has been used in this form since the end of the 18th century. The square's appearance today is mainly the result of tidying in the 1930s and 1940s, when the stalls disappeared.

What stands on the square

The town hall from the 18th century has survived, and since the end of the Second World War it has housed the Ethnographic Museum. In 1996 a plaque about the arrival of Jews in Poland in the Middle Ages, made in 1907 by Henryk Herschel Hochman, was set into its wall. On the square stands a fountain with the sculpture “Three Fiddlers” by Bronisław Chromy from 1970. At number 11 a plaque recalls the remains of university buildings that Casimir the Great began to raise.

Practical information

• Location: Kazimierz, Old Town district, about 400 m from the Old Synagogue.
• The 19th-century tenement houses around the square contain shops, galleries, restaurants and hotels.