What makes Kraków unique: not only Market Square and medieval tenement houses.

This is only a tiny fragment of what is left of the once-powerful Kraków Fortress. Perhaps it's not as spectacular as other, older monuments in my city, but I love to visit, photograph, and inhale the cold, history-saturated air from inside the forts. Regardless of who built them, this is part of my country's history and a unique monument on a global scale.

NOWA HUTA - THE LEGACY OF COLD WAR

Another place that is definitely worth visiting is Nowa Huta, a district of Kraków built by communists after WWII, as a workers' city - was to be a counterweight to the conservative, bourgeois old town. It was also a workforce base for the nearby Lenin Steelworks.
I have lived here since I was 3 and as a teenager I hated this place. It seemed sad, boring, and deserted to me, whenever I could, I ran away with friends to the old town.

But this has changed - Nowa Huta with its space filled with greenery, wide streets, and characteristic socialist-realist architecture became my favorite place for walking. Colorful, full of concerts and cultural events, with interesting places and young people it is a great alternative to the old center besieged by tourists. It is also a witness to the recent history of my country, the effect of the short-lived triumph of the communist regime.

_{Central Square By TomRollauer - Praca własna, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51972795}

Do you know what makes me happy? That we inhabitants were able to tame this past and made it our export commodity. Nowa Huta is more and more often visited by tourists, including foreign ones. It is worth taking a walk among the impressive, socialist-realist buildings, take an old bus called "cucumber", dine in a cult place and look at the square where comrade Lenin's monument once stood. If you go on a trip with a local guide, you'll definitely hear lots of funny anecdotes about how the inhabitants dealt with everyday life and what pranks they made to the monument of Lenin. Even quite recently guests of nearby restaurants told waiters to bring vodka and appetizers to the monument, the residents left "notes" - joking or offensive, and finally someone almost blown up the monument. Lenin lost only his left foot, but all the windows fell out of the surrounding buildings. The history is quite fresh here. And although the monument itself has long been a memory, the spirit of Lenin still hovers over this place...

... Okay, it's just a photo montage 😉 But the monument stood exactly in this place.

An undoubted attraction, even for local residents, is the Administrative Center of the Sendzimir (formerly Lenin) steelworks which includes two twin buildings (one for the workers, the other for management), also called the "Doge's Palace" or the "Vatican" due to the many references to the Renaissance. The building for the management has been abandoned for years - unfortunately the owner has no money for renovation, and the city cannot or doesn't want to buy the building. It's a shame because it would be a great museum! Fortunately, part of the building is open to visitors (for organized groups).

From the outside, the buildings look the same (in socialism, theoretically, everyone was equal!), but their interiors differ in decor and finish. In the abandoned building for management we can see the most expensive materials: marbles, expensive wood furniture, leather upholstery, large crystal chandeliers, etc. This part has an amazing atmosphere! The smell of dust, old upholstery, and marbles creates an unforgettable mix.

Due to the fact that the building is abandoned and the interiors are preserved unchanged for decades, films or music videos are often made here.

Under these buildings there is another attraction - the anti-aircraft (also called anti-nuclear) shelter. In fact - it wasn't a typical nuclear shelter until the 1970s that certain modifications were introduced to make some rooms resistant to the first nuclear strike.

_{By Piotr Tomaszewski fly4pix.pl [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons}

The underground, partly preserved in its original shape and partly restored, takes us to the times when the threat of war between east and west seemed very real.
We can feel the horror of those days and at the same time appreciate that we live in relatively calm times.

In addition to the parts for ordinary workers, the shelter also had a command center - it's almost fully equipped to this day.

During the crisis, in this place specialists and all decision-makers were on duty by the phone.

A similar shelter is located under one of the local hospitals, in the event of an attack it was to be a Medical First Aid Unit. Fortunately a shelter was never used as intended. Almost all the equipment has been inserted there in the last years, but it's authentic and comes from the sixties - eighties. Anyway, it looks like a set design for a horror movie!

That's all I wanted to show you today. Of course, there are many more such places in Kraków and I could talk about them endlessly... There is nothing else for me to do but invite you cordially to my city - in more favorable times 😊. I encourage you to get off the beaten paths and visit places less known... They are usually full of surprises!

Thank you for your attention!

I am the only author of the text and all photos without a signature. Some of my pictures have also been published by me in other places.
The other (signed) pictures were used in accordance with the assigned license.

sources:
- Information brochure "Cracow Fortress Trail" developed by the City of Kraków
- Atlas of the Krakow Fortress, Waldemar Brzoskwinia, Jan Janczykowski
- www.fortyck.pl
- www.twierdza.art.pl*