Sukiennice krakowskie – fazy budowy

Abstract

THE CLOTH HALL IN KRAKOW – THE STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

Throughout centuries the Cloth Hall in Kraków has been the most important commercial facility in Main Market Square (Rynek Główny). The construction of cloth chambers was announced by Prince Boleslaus the Chaste in the Town Charter of 1257. The earliest cloth chambers, built of wood and lined up in two rows along an internal passage, neighboured on the oldest stalls to the east (with their base sections built in stone and brick) and the bread benches to the west. This layout continued throughout the successive alterations and shifts of the particular structures. The Cloth Hall as it is now originated during the reign of King Casimir III the Great, i.e. around the middle of the 14th century (or later, after the King’s death). The facility in its early form was composed of four stone and brick quarters separated by an internal passage intersecting another passage known as “the cross”, which had been retained from the previous layout. Each of the four sections housed nine cloth chambers (shops), while the outermost chambers in the western row were designated as cloth cropping facilities. Building new chambers required the removal of the western part of the adjacent stalls, while heir eastern section was pulled down towards the end of the 14th century to make room for the stone and brick Rich Stalls, also based on the quarter layout. The bread benches remained to the west of the Cloth Hall. The taxes levied on the cloth shops were paid to the ruler in the first place. The municipality profi ted from part of the chambers and the cropping facilities. In the late 14th century the Casimir’s quarters were merged into a monumental Gothic basilican edifice with a high hall built above the internal passage. Damaged by fire in 1555, the structure was rebuilt in the years 1556–1559; in 1560 the floor above the newly roofed hall was converted into the Smatruz (the market hall for minor traders) accessible from the north and the south through the monumental flights of stairs ornamented with turrets and top-storey loggias. Following a period of its decline in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Cloth Hall was rebuilt and altered by well-known Polish architect Tomasz Pryliński in the years 1875–1879.