The Golden Book of Cracow [antikvár]

One of the illustrations from the Chronicles of H. Schedel, published in Nuremberg in 1493: a view of Cracow in the late fifteenth century. The Wawel is on the hill overlooking the city. On the far side of a branch of the Vistula, which later dried up, and within the city walls stands Kazimierz -today one of the suburbs of Cracow. INTRODUCTION "Cracow was not built in a day". The old Polish proverb underlines one of the essential features of this city, its extremely long history, extending back over thousands rather than hundreds of years. The period of prehistoric colonisation on the Jurassic hills along the banlcs of the Vistula was much longer than the thousand years of the city's recorded history. Temporary settlements by nomads in the Palaeolithic period were followed by permanent ones some five thousand years ago. Remains of the earliest settlements have been found on the Wawel hill, which was to become the political centre of the community. Archaeological excavations bear witness to the uninterrupted local production of objects, from the tools of the Neolithic period to later pieces in bronze and iron. The mining of metals began in the area in about 1700 B.C. Cracow and the surrounding territory came under the influence of Lusazian, Pomeranian and more recently Przeworsk culture. Numerous objects from the Roman period (lst-4th centuries A.D.) reflect the lively commercial relationship between Cracow and the Empire. The oldest monument in Cracow dates to the 7th century and is a mound some 16 metres high known as the Krak tumulus. We can trace the beginnings of the Vislani state, to the 8th century when a small fortified city fgrodj, with surrounding towns fpodgrodziej, was built on the Wawel hill, probably the seat of the capital of the Vislani. In the course of the 9th and 10th centuries Cracow came under the influence first of Greater Moravia and then of Bohemia. It is to this period that we date the earliest document relating to Cracow, in which the name of the city, transcribed in Arabic by a certain Ibrahim Ibn-Yaqub (a Jewish merchant from Spain), can be interpreted as