A park where the walls stood

Four kilometres of paths, 21 hectares, three thousand trees, and underneath a filled-in moat and the foundations of walls that protected Kraków for five hundred years. The Planty are a park that is also a plan of the city: walking them, you follow exactly the boundary laid out in 1257.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the walls were in ruins. The Austrian authorities declared them useless and unhygienic: stinking water stood in the moat and weeds grew between the towers. In 1807 the decision to demolish was taken. Over twenty years the towers, gates and walls disappeared: three kilometres of fortifications, 47 towers, eight gates.

Little survived, and that only thanks to Professor Feliks Radwański. He convinced the senate of the Free City that without walls to the north, the wind would blow dust and disease onto the Market Square and lift the skirts of women walking to church. The argument worked: St Florian's Gate, the Barbican and a stretch of wall with three towers still stand today.

In place of the rest, Florian Straszewski, a Kraków official and lover of gardens, designed a park. He planted trees, laid out paths and for years paid for it from his own pocket. An obelisk below Wawel reminds us of him today. The name Planty comes from plantowanie, levelling the ground, not from plants.

The best time to walk the Planty is early morning, before the Market Square wakes. You will see what tourists usually miss: students with books outside Collegium Novum, nuns walking to Gródek, elderly men playing chess and pigeons occupying the benches like regulars. And you will understand why the people of Kraków call the Planty the biggest drawing room in town.