Krakau audiotours

Krakow was Poland's capital for five centuries, and unlike Warsaw it was spared wartime destruction, which means you can walk streets that look largely as they did in the 15th century. The Rynek Glowny, the main market square, is the largest medieval market square in Europe and still genuinely alive, with the 14th-century Cloth Hall at its centre and the Wawel Castle looming up on its limestone hill to the south.

Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter, was home to one of the most important Jewish communities in Europe before the Second World War.

Today it holds a complicated mixture of memorial spaces, synagogues, cemeteries, and a neighbourhood that has become one of the most creative parts of the city, with Plac Nowy functioning as the social hub for students and locals every evening. The proximity of Schindler's enamel factory and Auschwitz-Birkenau makes the weight of that history impossible to sidestep.