Lublin Old Town — the market square, the Crown Tribunal and a gate full of museum

Two charters and a wall built after a raid

Lublin was first chartered in 1257, but the document is lost and little is known about the town of those years. The date that matters for the street plan you walk today is 1317, when Władysław Łokietek granted Magdeburg rights and the market square was laid out, with everything else arranged around it.

There were no walls at first. They came after the Tatar raid of 1341 — the chronicler Janko of Czarnków credited them to Casimir the Great and dated the work to the years immediately afterwards. Three pieces of that ring survive: the Kraków Gate to the west, the Grodzka Gate on the castle side, and the Gothic Tower.

Since 23 February 2006 the Old Town has been a district in its own right. It covers 0.94 km² and has around two and a half thousand residents — one of the smallest districts in Lublin, and the one most people pass through.

A market square that is not a square

The Old Town market is a trapezium of roughly 62 by 72 metres, with six streets leading out of its corners — something you only notice when you cross it diagonally. There is no open space in the middle, but a building, so only a narrow walkway is left between its wall and the house fronts.

The earliest buildings were timber. Masonry houses appear in the records towards the end of the sixteenth century, hurried along by the fire of 1575, which destroyed part of the town along with the collegiate and Dominican churches. Protected buildings today include numbers 3, 4, 5, 6 (the Chociszewski house), 7, 9 (the House of the Lions) and 17 (the Wieniawski house).

The Second World War took the entire southern side of the square: numbers 16 to 20 ceased to exist and the remaining houses were damaged. Reconstruction followed after the war, partly to designs by Ignacy Kędzierski, which is why some of the older-looking elevations actually date from the 1950s.

The town hall that turned into a court

The building in the centre of the square went up in 1389, after the wooden town hall burned down. The Gothic block had two turrets and an external stair. In the first half of the sixteenth century it gained a Renaissance parapet and new steps to the first floor, and after the fire of 1575 it was rebuilt in Renaissance style, modelled on the town halls of Sandomierz and Tarnów.

In 1578, at the Warsaw Sejm, King Stefan Batory gave up his powers as supreme judge in favour of a court run by the nobility. That created the Crown Tribunal, the appellate court for the nobility, with two seats: Lublin heard cases from Lesser Poland, Piotrków those from Greater Poland and Mazovia. The town hall was adapted for the role, raised by a second storey in the 1680s and given a rebuilt tower.

Its present classicist form dates from 1781–1787, when Dominik Merlini remodelled it for King Stanisław August Poniatowski. The building was stretched to nearly twice its width and the second floor fitted out for the land courts. The relief with the symbol of justice in the gable was reconstructed in 1977, and the building entered the heritage register on 14 February 1967.

It now houses the city's wedding hall and a museum of the town hall and the Crown Tribunal, while the former wine cellar and lock-up underneath form part of the Lublin Underground Route, a walkable passage below the square linking several houses.

The Kraków Gate and five floors of city history

The gate on the road towards Kraków was built in the middle of the fourteenth century, together with the walls. In the fifteenth century it was raised considerably, and the brickwork was given diagonal bands of clinker brick — dark, over-fired brick that still draws a clear pattern across the tower. Fires in 1515 and 1575 forced rebuilding.

In the sixteenth century an octagonal upper stage, a copper cupola and an outer gate were probably added, and in the eighteenth century the whole took on a Baroque air. The gate has been on the heritage register under number A/146 since 1957 and 1967.

Inside, the Museum of the History of the City of Lublin spreads over five floors, its displays running from the sixth century to the end of the Second World War. The route takes you upwards, so the gate doubles as a viewpoint over the market square and over Łokietek Square on the other side.

An archcathedral, a tower and a sacristy for whispers

The church that is now the Archcathedral of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist was begun by the Jesuits in 1586 to designs by Giovanni Maria Bernardoni and Giuseppe Brizio. It was consecrated on 25 April 1604 and finished in 1625. After the fire of 1752 the interior was redone in Baroque style, and five years later Józef Meyer covered it with trompe-l'œil frescoes that fake architecture on flat surfaces.

When the Jesuit order was suppressed in 1773 the building passed to the Trinitarians, fell into disrepair and in 1797 served as a grain store. It became a cathedral in 1805 and an archcathedral in 1992. The classicist front was designed in 1821 by Antonio Corazzi, remodelled in 1878, and restored after wartime damage under Bishop Stefan Wyszyński.

The oddest thing inside is the acoustic sacristy: a word whispered into one corner carries clearly to the opposite one, while nothing is audible in the middle of the room. Crypts beneath the church hold the graves of Lublin's bishops.

Next door stands the Trinitarian Tower, the highest historic vantage point in the city. It began as a monastery gateway and the entrance to the Jesuit college, was raised and converted into a belfry in 1627, and took its name from the Trinitarians, who held it only briefly after the Jesuits were suppressed. The city took it over in 1818, Corazzi recast it in neo-Gothic dress during the nineteenth century, and it was rebuilt after war damage between 1945 and 1952. Four bells hang in it, among them Maria, the largest in Lublin, rung only on exceptional occasions. The viewing platform is about forty metres up, and the Archdiocesan Museum occupies the rooms below it.

The Lublin Renaissance, a style with its own surname

Visit several churches in this part of Poland and they will start to look like relatives, which is no accident. Art historians call the group the Lublin Renaissance, or the Lublin type; Władysław Tatarkiewicz introduced the term to scholarship in 1926, and after the war it was promoted as Poland's own contribution to European art.

You recognise it by a handful of things: a simple plan and a façade without a tower, a chancel narrower than the nave and closed with a semicircular apse, a slender, light body often carried on buttresses, and unusually rich detail drawn not as applied stucco but directly in mortar with strong binders. The three main centres are Zamość, Kazimierz Dolny and Lublin itself.

In Lublin the group includes the Dominican basilica with its Firlej chapel of 1630, the Bernardine church of St Paul, the Church of the Holy Spirit and the Jesuit church already described, now the cathedral. The geometric coffered decoration was first used by Bernardo Morando in the chancel of the collegiate church in Zamość, and the best-known example of the type is the parish church at Kazimierz Dolny, rebuilt by Jakub Balin between 1610 and 1613. Jan Wolff and Jan Jaroszewicz worked on later churches in the group.

A square with no church on it

The quietest corner of the Old Town is Plac Po Farze, the square of the former parish church. St Michael's stood here, founded according to tradition in 1282 after Duke Leszek the Black dreamt beneath an oak — the legend of that dream, and of the victory for which he promised a church, still clings to the place.

The church has been gone since 1846, when its condition led to demolition. The foundations came to light during work in 1936–1938, but were only fully displayed after a refurbishment in 2002. The line of the walls is now set into the paving, so you can walk the outline of a nave that no longer exists. The old presbytery survived and houses a youth culture centre.

Getting there

• On foot from the centre — the Old Town starts at Łokietek Square opposite the Kraków Gate, reached straight from Krakowskie Przedmieście; a full circuit takes about an hour.
• By train — Lublin station lies south of the Old Town; finish the journey by bus or trolleybus, or walk up through the city centre.
• By car — traffic inside the walls is restricted and the lanes are narrow, so it is easier to leave the car in the centre or by the castle hill and walk up.
• By public transport — the stops on Krakowskie Przedmieście and Aleja Tysiąclecia are served by almost every line crossing the centre, and the market square is a few minutes away from either.

Worth knowing

An hour covers the walk itself; add the climb up the Kraków Gate, the Trinitarian Tower and the passage under the square and you are looking at half a day. Start with the tower, because the view from the top explains a street plan that is unreadable at pavement level.

The Old Town is compact and entirely walkable, but the cobbles are uneven and there are slopes between Łokietek Square and the castle hill. The best light on the market square façades comes in the morning, with the sun above the eastern side.

The complex is protected as a Historic Monument under the name "Lublin — the historic urban and architectural complex"; the order of the President of Poland was issued on 25 April 2007 and took effect on 16 May that year. The boundaries take in the castle hill, so the castle with its Chapel of the Holy Trinity fits naturally into the same visit.

How to get there and practical info

Location

Old Town, Lublin, Lublin Voivodeship — between Łokietek Square and the castle hill

District area

0.94 km², around two and a half thousand residents

Town charter

1317, Magdeburg rights granted by Władysław Łokietek; an earlier charter of 1257 survives only by mention

Market square

a trapezium of about 62 by 72 metres, six streets from its corners, the Crown Tribunal in the middle

Surviving fortifications

the Kraków Gate, the Grodzka Gate and the Gothic Tower

Heritage status

Historic Monument "Lublin — the historic urban and architectural complex", by order of the President of Poland of 25 April 2007

Time needed

an hour for the walk, half a day with the gate, the tower and the underground route

Current opening times and tickets

official website of the City of Lublin

When to go