Krakow is a charming old town on the banks of the Vistula River, in the
valley in front of the Carpathian plateau in the southern part of Poland. In the Old
Town you can see about 6 thousand buildings in Renaissance, Baroque and Gothic
styles, as well as more than 2 million works of art. Krakow is the only major city in
Poland that was not destroyed during the Second World War, thanks to the heroism
of the Soviet Army. Today Krakow is a well-preserved city with picturesque
cobblestone pavements, many churches and museums.
Krakow is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. The
city has grown from a Stone Age settlement to Poland's second-most-important
city. It began as a hamlet on Wawel Hill and was reported as a busy trading centre
of Central Europe in 965. With the establishment of new universities and cultural
venues at the emergence of the Second Polish Republic in 1918 and throughout the
20th century, Kraków reaffirmed its role as a major national academic and artistic
centre. The city has a population of about 780,000, with approximately 8 million
additional people living within a 100 km (62 mi) radius of its main square.
The city has grown from a Stone Age settlement to Poland's second-mostimportant city. It began as a hamlet on Wawel Hill and was reported as a busy
trading centre of Central Europe in 965. With the establishment of new universities
and cultural venues at the emergence of the Second Polish Republic in 1918 and
throughout the 20th century, Kraków reaffirmed its role as a major national
academic and artistic centre. The city has a population of about 780,000, with
approximately 8 million additional people living within a 100 km (62 mi) radius of
its main square.
In 1978, Karol Wojtyła, archbishop of Kraków, was elevated to
the papacy as Pope John Paul II—the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. Also that
year, UNESCO approved Kraków's entire Old Town and historic centre as its
first World Heritage Site alongside Quito. Kraków is classified as a global
city with the ranking of "high sufficiency" by the Globalization and World Cities
Research Network. Its extensive cultural heritage across the epochs
of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque
architecture includes Wawel
Cathedral and Wawel Royal Castle on the banks of the Vistula, St. Mary's
Basilica, Saints Peter and Paul Church and the largest medieval market square in
Europe. Kraków is home to Jagiellonian University, one of the oldest universities
in the world and traditionally Poland's most reputable institution of higher learning.
Jagiellonian University
The Jagiellonian University is a public research university in Kraków,
Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university
in Poland and the 13th oldest university in continuous operation in the world. It is
regarded as Poland's most prestigious academic institution. The university has been
viewed as a guardian of Polish culture, particularly for continuing operations
during the partitions of Poland and the two World Wars, as well as a significant
contributor to the intellectual heritage of Europe.
The campus of the Jagiellonian University is centrally located within
the city of Kraków. The university consists of thirteen main faculties, in addition to
three faculties composing the Collegium Medicum. It employs roughly 4,000
academics and provides education to more than 35,000 students who study in 166
fields. The main language of instruction is Polish, although around 30 degrees are
offered in English and some in German. The university library is among the
largest of its kind and houses a number of medieval manuscripts, including the
landmark De Revolutionibus by alumnus Nicolaus Copernicus. Faculty and
graduates of the university have been elected to the Polish Academy of Arts and
Sciences, the Royal Society, the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and other honorary societies.
The Jagiellonian University is consistently ranked among the top
universities in the world.
History
In the mid-14th century, King Casimir III the Great realised that the nation
needed a class of educated people, especially lawyers, who could arrange a better
set of the country's laws and administer the courts and offices. His efforts to found
an institution of higher learning in Poland were rewarded when Pope Urban
V granted him permission to set up a university in Kraków. A royal charter of
foundation was issued on 12 May 1364, and a simultaneous document was issued
by the city council granting privileges to the Studium Generale.
Development of the University of Kraków stalled upon the death of its
founder (King Casimir), and lectures were held in various places across the city,
including, amongst others, in professors' houses, churches and in the cathedral
school on the Wawel Hill. It is believed that the construction of a building to house
the Studium Generale began on Plac Wolnica in what is today the district of
Kazimierz.
After a period of low interest and lack of funds, the institution was restored
in the 1390s by Jadwiga, king of Poland, the daughter of King Louis the Great of
Hungary and Poland. The royal couple, Jadwiga and her husband Władysław II
Jagiełło decided that, instead of building new premises for the university, it would
be better to buy an existing edifice; it was thus that a building on Żydowska Street,
which had previously been the property of the Pęcherz family, was acquired in
1399. The Queen donated all of her personal jewelry to the university, allowing it
to enroll 203 students. The faculties of astronomy, law and theology attracted
eminent scholars: for example, John Cantius, Stanisław of Skarbimierz, Paweł
Włodkowic, Jan of Głogów, and Albert Brudzewski, who from 1491 to 1495 was
one of Nicolaus Copernicus' teachers. The university was the first university in
Europe to establish independent chairs in Mathematics and Astronomy. This rapid
expansion in the university's faculty necessitated the purchase of larger premises in
which to house them; it was thus that the building known today as the Collegium
Maius, with its quadrangle and beautiful arcade, came into being towards the
beginning of the 15th century. The Collegium Maius' qualities, many of which
directly contributed to the sheltered, academic atmosphere at the university,
became widely respected, helping the university establish its reputation as a place
of learning in Central Europe.
Golden age of the Renaissance
For several centuries, almost the entire intellectual elite of Poland was
educated at the university, where they enjoyed particular royal favors. While it
was, and largely remains, Polish students who make up the majority of the
university's students, it has, over its long history, educated thousands of foreign
students from countries such as Lithuania, Russia, Hungary, Bohemia, Germany,
and Spain. During the second half of the 15th century, over 40 percent of students
came from the outside of the Kingdom of Poland.
The first chancellor of the university was Piotr Wysz, and the first
professors were Czechs, Germans and Poles, most of them trained at the Charles
University in Prague. By 1520 Greek philology was introduced by Constanzo
Claretti and Wenzel von Hirschberg; Hebrew was also taught. At this time,
the Collegium Maius consisted of seven reading rooms, six of which were named
for the great ancient scholars: Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Galen, Ptolemy,
and Pythagoras. Furthermore, it was during this period that the faculties of Law,
Medicine, Theology, and Philosophy were established in their own premises; two
of these buildings, the Collegium Iuridicum and Collegium Minus, survive to this
day. The golden era of the University of Kraków took place during the Polish
Renaissance, between 1500 and 1535, when it was attended by 3,215 students in
the first decade of the 16th century, and it was in these years that the foundations
for the Jagiellonian Library were set, which allowed for the addition of a library
floor to the Collegium Maius. The library's original rooms in which all books were
chained to their cases in order to prevent theft are no longer used as such.
However, they are still occasionally opened to host visiting lecturers' talks.
As the university's popularity, along with that of the ever more provincial
Kraków's, declined in later centuries, the number of students attending the
university also fell and, as such, the attendance record set in the early 16th-century
wasn't surpassed until the late 18th century. This phenomenon was recorded as part
of a more general economic and political decline seen in the Polish–Lithuanian
Commonwealth, which was suffering from the effects of poor governance and the
policies of hostile neighbors at the time. In fact, despite a number of expansion
projects during the late 18th century, many of the university's buildings had fallen
into disrepair and were being used for a range of other purposes; in the university's
archives, there is one entry which reads: 'Nobody lives in the building, nothing
happens there. If the lecture halls underwent refurbishment they could be rented
out to accommodate a laundry'. This period thus represents one of the darkest
periods in the university's history and is almost certainly the one during which the
closure of the institution seemed most imminent.
Turmoil and near closure after the partitions
After the third partition of Poland in 1795 and the ensuing Napoleonic
Wars, Kraków became a free city under the protection of the Austrian Empire; this,
however, was not to last long. In 1846, after the Kraków Uprising, the city and its
university became part of the Austrian Empire. The Austrians were in many ways
hostile to the institution and, soon after their arrival, removed many of the
furnishings from the Collegium Maius' Auditorium Maximum in order to convert it
into a grain store. However, the threat of closure of the University was ultimately
dissipated by Ferdinand I of Austria's decree to maintain it. By the 1870s the
fortunes of the university had improved so greatly that many scholars had returned.
The liquefaction of nitrogen and oxygen was successfully demonstrated by
professors Zygmunt Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski in 1883. Thereafter the
Austrian authorities took on a new role in the development of the university and
provided funds for the construction of a number of new buildings, including the
neo-gothic Collegium Novum, which opened in 1887. It was, conversely, from
this building that in 1918 a large painting of Kaiser Franz Joseph was removed
and destroyed by Polish students advocating the reestablishment of an independent
Polish state.
For the 500th anniversary of the university's foundation, a monument
to Copernicus was placed in the quadrangle of the Collegium Maius; this statue is
now to be found in the direct vicinity of the Collegium Novum, outside
the Collegium Witkowskiego, to where it was moved in 1953. Nevertheless, it was
in the Grzegórzecka and the Kopernika areas that much of the university's
expansion took place up to 1918; during this time the Collegium Medicum was
relocated to a site just east of the centre, and was expanded with the addition of a
number of modern teaching hospitals – this 'medical campus' remains to this day.
By the late 1930s, the number of students at the university had increased
dramatically to almost six thousand. Now a major centre for education in the
independent Republic of Poland, the university attained government support for the
purchase of building plots for new premises, as a result of which a number of
residencies were built for students and professors alike. However, of all the
projects begun during this era, the most important would have to be the creation of
the Jagiellonian Library. The library's monumental building, construction of which
began in 1931, was finally completed towards the end of the interwar period,
which allowed the university's many varied literary collections to be relocated to
their new home by the outbreak of war in 1939.
Modern era and renovation
On November 6, 1939, following the Nazi invasion of Poland, 184
professors were arrested and deported to Sachsenhausen concentration
camp during an operation codenamed Sonderaktion Krakau (Special Operation
Krakow).
Despite the university's reopening after the cessation of hostilities in 1945,
the new government of Poland was hostile to the teachings of the pre-war
university and the faculty was suppressed by the Communists in 1954. By 1957
the Polish government decided that it would invest in the establishment of new
facilities near Jordan Park and expansion of other smaller existing facilities.
Construction work proved slow and many of the stated goals were never achieved;
it was this poor management that eventually led a number of scholars to openly
criticise the government for its apparent lack of interest in educational
development and disregard for the university's future. A number of new buildings,
such as the Collegium Paderevianum, were built with funds from the legacy
of Ignacy Paderewski.
By 1989 Poland had overthrown its Communist government. In that same
year, the Jagiellonian University successfully completed the purchase of its first
building plot in Pychowice, Kraków, where, from 2000, construction of a new
complex of university buildings, the so-called Third Campus, began. The new
campus, officially named the '600th Anniversary Campus', was developed in
conjunction with the new LifeScience Park, which is managed by the Jagiellonian
Centre for Innovation, the university's research consortium. Public funds
earmarked for the project amounted to 946.5 million zlotys, or 240 million euros.
Poland's entry into the European Union in 2004 has proved instrumental in
improving the fortunes of the Jagiellonian University, which has seen huge
increases in funding from both central government and European authorities,
allowing it to develop new departments, research centres, and better support the
work of its students and academics.
International partnerships
The university's academic advancement in both Poland and abroad is
illustrated by its widely recognized research achievements. The scientists and
physicians from the Collegium Medicum carry out pioneer studies, e.g. in cardiac
surgery, urology and neurology, often leading to the development of novel
treatment methods. Their findings have been published in international journals
such as European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Medicine, New England Journal of
Medicine, and The Lancet. UJ archaeologists lead explorations of ancient sites in
various parts of the world, including Egypt, Cyprus, Central America, South Asia
and Altay. The astronomers take part in major international projects,
including H.E.S.S. and VIPERS. The work of UJ bio-technologists has been
published in journals, such as Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry, Molecular
Ecology Resources, and European Journal of Human Genetics.
In the English-speaking world, the Jagiellonian University has international
partnerships
with
the University
of
Cambridge, University
of
Melbourne, University of Chicago, University of California, Los Angeles, London
School of Economics, University of Rochester, University of California,
Irvine, Case Western Reserve University. In the French-speaking world, partner
universities include the Sorbonne, University of Montpellier. UJ also maintains
strong academic partnership with Heidelberg University, Germany's oldest
university. The Jagiellonian University offers specializations in German law, in
conjunction with Heidelberg University and Johannes Gutenberg University of
Mainz.
Other
cooperation
agreements
exist
with Charles
University
Prague, University of Vienna, University of Tokyo, Saint Petersburg State
University, Technical University of Munich, and Free University of Berlin.
The main reasons for visiting the city are: its historical monuments,
recreation as well as relatives and friends (placing third in the ranking), religion
and business.