The knife in the Cloth Hall

Enter the Cloth Hall from the St Mary's side and look up, to the right of the entrance. An old iron knife hangs on a chain. It has hung there for centuries and nobody is sure why.

Version one, the best known: it is the knife from St Mary's tower. Two brothers built the church's towers; the elder built faster, so the younger killed him with this knife out of envy and then threw himself from the tower. The knife was hung up as a memorial and a warning. It fits the unequal towers but not the dates: the towers were built around 1400, and the legend appears only in the nineteenth century.

Version two, the historical one: the knife is a symbol of the Magdeburg law under which Kraków was governed. That law punished thieves on the market by cutting off an ear, and the knife hung where the sentence was carried out, as a reminder. In many German towns similar executioner's knives hung by the town halls.

Version three, the merchants' one: cloth was traded in the Cloth Hall and the knife was used to cut the measure. A seller who cheated on length lost a hand, to the knife. This version is the least likely but the one most happily told to children.

The knife is real and old, as the corrosion shows. Which story you choose is up to you. The people of Kraków say a good legend matters more than the truth, and the Cloth Hall is the best proof: in a building where cloth was sold for six hundred years, amber is sold today, and upstairs hang the paintings of Matejko.