The narrow strip of city between Wawel Hill and Kazimierz, the hinge that connects royal Krakow to the old Jewish town. Stradom grew up on what was once marshy ground along a vanished arm of the Vistula, and for centuries it was the suburb you passed through on the road south out of the walled city. Today it is a busy, slightly transitional quarter, defined by the traffic of Stradomska and Dietla streets and by a remarkable density of churches.
For its small size Stradom carries an unusual concentration of religious houses — the Bernardine church and monastery at the foot of Wawel, the Missionaries' church, and the Convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart among them — a legacy of the orders that settled in the suburb beyond the city walls. Ulica Dietla, a broad boulevard laid out over the filled-in Old Vistula channel, marks the historic boundary with Kazimierz and is lined with grand 19th-century apartment blocks.
Most visitors pass through Stradom on the walk from the castle to the Jewish quarter rather than stopping, but the churches reward a glance and the short distances make it an easy stretch to explore on foot between the two great districts it joins.