Krzysztof Petrus

In this article an attempt has been made to answer the question to what extent the use of exclusively traditional, archival research methods enables us to determine typical town-planning and architectural features of the 15th- and 16th-century residential development of the western suburbs of Cracow, including the iuridica of Garbary. After developing that historically valuable area, forming today a part of the city centre (Śródmieście) marked by Łobzowska, Dunajewskiego, Podwale, Jabłonowskich, Piłsudskiego streets and Mickiewicza i Słowackiego avenues, no material traces have remained – the old city suburbs were completely destroyed in the times of the Swedish invasion, the written sources have proved to be meagre, no iconographic sources exist, while the urban residential development erected in place of iuridica in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries does not allow us to conduct extensive archaeological research.

The paper presents three plans of Cracow from 1655, 1657 and 1702, together with an assessment of their suitability as a source materials for the studies of western suburbs restitution after the Swedish invasion in the years 1655–1657. This research is in fact highly relevant to the history of urban development in Cracow: although after the Swedish invasion only a small part of the suburbs was rebuilt, on the basis of those structures, in subsequent years, the exclusive tenement houses district was formed in the second half of the nineteenth century.

W niniejszym artykule przedstawiono zarys historii przemian przestrzennych największego krakowskiego przedmieścia w latach 1587–1655. Tematowi temu nie poświęcono dotąd należnej uwagi, a opublikowane prace przedstawiają historię Garbar jedynie do najazdu arcyksięcia Maksymiliana Habsburga w roku 1587. Tymczasem oblężenie Krakowa przez zwolenników habsburskiego pretendenta do tronu zamknęło niezwykle pomyślny etap w dziejach przedmieścia, a dokonana wówczas likwidacja zabudowy zmusiła jego mieszkańców do szybkiej i intensywnej odbudowy. Artykuł stanowi również przyczynek do dalszych badań nad zabudową przedmieścia pod koniec XVI i w pierwszej połowie XVII stulecia, wypełniających istotną lukę w aktualnym stanie wiedzy o rozwoju urbanistycznym krakowskiego zespołu miejskiego.   

This paper presents an outline of the history of spatial transformations of Cracow’s largest suburb in the years 1587–1655. So far, this topic has not been given due attention and the published works only present the history of Garbary up to the invasion of Archduke Maximilian Habsburg in 1587. However, the siege of Cracow by supporters of the representative of the House of Habsburg, who aspired to the throne, closed an extremely successful stage in the history of the suburb, and the liquidation of existing buildings forced its residents to undertake a quick and intensive reconstruction. Furthermore, the paper contributes to further research into the suburb’s development at the end of the 16th century and in the first half of the 17th century, thus filling a considerable gap in research on the development of the urban system of Cracow.