Kraków

Epic card · No. 14167

Kraków, officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 816,614 (2025), with 1,428,363 people living in the Kraków metropolitan area. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 and has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish economic, academic, cultural, and artistic life. Its Old Town was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978, one of the world's first sites granted the status. The city began as a fortified settlement on Wawel Hill around the 8th century. In 1038, it became the seat of Polish monarchs from the Piast dynasty, and subsequently served as the centre of administration under Jagiellonian kings and of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until the late 16th century, when Sigismund III transferred his royal court to Warsaw. With the emergence of the Second Polish Republic in 1918, Kraków reaffirmed its...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Andrzej Otrębski, CC BY-SA 4.0