Market Square (Rynek)

The market square is the obvious heart of Kazimierz Dolny and one of the most photographed spaces in Poland. Renaissance and Mannerist merchants' houses, faced with elaborately carved stone reliefs of saints, dragons and griffins, surround a wide cobbled square with a wooden wellhouse in the middle.

The Przybyła Brothers' houses at numbers 12 and 13, with their famously ornate facades depicting Saint Christopher and Saint Nicholas, are the most striking — Polish art historians put them among the country's finest examples of sixteenth-century town architecture. The square is busy on summer weekends with painters, cafe tables, and a Saturday market. Most of the houses are now art galleries, antique shops or restaurants.

things to do sight architecture
A story
The wealth that produced these merchants' houses came from grain. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Kazimierz was one of the most important river ports in Poland: vast quantities of wheat were loaded onto barges here and floated down the Vistula to Gdańsk for export to Western Europe. Two of the grandest houses on the square — the Przybyła Brothers' houses — were built by grain merchants in 1615.