The university and museum quarter west of the Old Town, taking its name — "the Sand" — from the sandy ground once worked for building material here. As Krakow burst its medieval walls in the 19th century, Piasek filled with the institutions a growing capital of culture needed: the academies, the galleries, and the great national collections that did not fit inside the cramped centre.
The district is dominated by the Jagiellonian University, whose 19th- and 20th-century faculty buildings spread west from the old Collegium Maius, and by the National Museum's main building, the largest of the museum's branches, which holds Polish painting and the modern collections. Nearby stand the Academy of Fine Arts and several smaller galleries, and the green wedge of the Błonia — a vast common meadow used for everything from grazing to papal masses — opens out to the west, with Jordan Park along its northern edge. The streets between are lined with handsome bourgeois apartment houses.
Piasek rewards visitors with an interest in art and the academic life of the city. It is quieter and greener than the centre, an easy walk from the Main Square, and the Błonia is the best place in Krakow for a run or a long open-air stroll.