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DESTYLERNIA „POLMOS" W KRAKOWIE S A. 263

sance look. Royal patronage of the arts was matched by the magnates and rich bour-geoisie who employed Italian masters to beautify their palaces and townhouses. Refu-gces from all over Europę, seeking protection from persecution, flowcd into Cracow's Jewłsh ąuarter, Kazimierz. Poland was known for its tołerance.

At the end of the eighteenth century, when the Polish state disappeared from the map of Europę, Cracow became the spiritual Capital of the Polish people, a symbol of its former glory and the site of patriotic demonstrations. It is no accident that on August 6, 1914, the first company of infantry under the leadership of Jozef Piłsudski be-gan its march from Cracow, beginning the arduous task of rcclaiming statehood.

By a fortunate accident of fate, the many catastrophes of history in this part of the world have spared Cracow's heritage buildings. About 600 of them present the story of the city's architecture beginning from the tenth century. There are morę than half a million historical objects - art works, crafts and ethnographic exhibits - Besides the famous Jagiellonian University there are eleven other institutions of higher leaming, a dozen or so theatres, dozens of art galleries, the Philharmonic...

Many people of world renown are connected with Cracow: Pope John Paul II, the Nobel laureates Czesław Miłosz and Wisława Szymborska, science fiction writer Stanisław Lem and playwright Sławomir Mrozek, and composers Krzysztof Penderecki and Zbigniew Preisner to name a few. Cracow is the birthplace of the łatę Tadeusz Kantor's Cricot 2 Theatre. Here is the famous Stary Theatre, world-cłass events such as the Organ Musie Days, Musie in Old Cracow, International Short Film Festi-val, International Print Triennale, and the Architecture Biennale. The Gothic and Ren-aissance interiors of Cracow's heritage buildings provide a worthy setting for these events.

By itself all this would be enough to bring the annual throngs of tourists to this town. But beyond that - and this is not simply local pride talking - Cracow has a spe-cial atmosphere which is difficult to express but whieh the visitor will sensc at cvcry step and will long rcmember. It is the mingling of history and the here and now: the hourly bugle cali from the tower of St. Mary's Church which halts in mid-note, recall-ing the sentry who trumpeted a waming of a Tartar onslaught and was slain by an enemy arrow; the June pageant of the Lajkonik, a folk character based on the story of a soldier who, it is said, got drunk and romped through town in the Turkish clothes of his fallen foe in the thirteenth century: the echo of old pagan rituals, also in June, when we float flower wreaths on the Vistula River; the annual competition for the silver cock, organised by the oldest municipal brotherhood of marksmen in Europę; the annual show of fanciful, glittering Christmas croches...