Krakow
the cultural capital city of Poland
On the Vistula, in southern Poland, one of the oldest cities in Poland is situated. Cracow was established before the 9th century, and since 1257 it has been holding the municipal rights. Currently it is the second largest city in Poland in terms of the number of inhabitants (more than 757 000) and in terms of area (more than 326 km²).
Origin of the name
According to a legend recorded by Kadlubek, the name of Cracow originates from the name of prince Krak. In reality, the origin of the city name is less of a prince's. Because Cracow comes from the word krak, used in dialects up to this day, which means a raven and is an onomatopoeic name created from the voice of this bird: caw - caw. So originally Cracow meant "the place abounding in ravens".
Location
The city is placed on the connection of several geographical lands: the Cracow Gate, the Valley of Sandomierz, the Valley of Oswiecim and the Foothills of West Beskids. The valley of Vistula river makes a parallel-oriented elongated city axis. The river network is composed of Vistula and its side streams: Wilga (the right-hand side), Rudawa, Bialucha, Dlubnia, Sanka and others (the left-hand side).
City functions
Cracow is a city having the rights of a district, the seat of authorities of the Malopolska province. It plays an important administrative, cultural, educational, economic, service and tourist role. It is an important road and railway junction, an airport of international importance is located in the vicinity.
Cracow is one of the most important cultural centres in Poland, and by many people it is even considered the cultural capital city of the country. In 2000 the capital city of Malopolska was chosen as one of the European cities of culture.
It is also one of important tourist and historic centres in Europe. In 2005 Cracow was visited by more than 7 million tourists, one million more than the year before (data from 2006).
The multitude of architectonic monuments in Cracow results from the long history of the city and the multiplicity of functions it played being the capital of the state, a resilient urban centre and the trade centre of the region, as well as a university and cultural centre. In addition, Cracow fortunately suffered relatively little during the wars (the largest devastation has been caused by the fires happening again and again since the Middle Ages). As a result Cracow is one of the most important European tourist centres with more than 6 000 precious monuments from different epochs. The area of the historic Old Town and Kazimierz was entered in 1978 on the first UNESCO List of World Culture Heritage.
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