Main Market Square in Kraków: what each building is, what it costs, and the order that fits the altar's 11:50 opening

💡 The Short Version: The square holds five sights with a ticket. St Mary’s Basilica is 20 PLN, with the altar opening at 11:50 (14:10 on Sundays) and tickets sold at the visitor office on the day. The Cloth Hall gallery is 35 PLN, the Town Hall Tower 22 PLN, the Rynek Underground 45 PLN and the Krzysztofory Palace 34 PLN. Tuesday is free at the gallery, the Underground (10:00 to 15:00) and the palace, and Monday at the Town Hall Tower. The Cloth Hall’s ground-floor stalls need no ticket. Or book a tour: the Old Town walking tourad (from £14, 2.5 hours) walks the square and the streets round it.

The sights, compared

Prices are the adult rate in złoty from the operators, at about 5.15 PLN to the pound. The Museum of Kraków runs the Town Hall Tower, the Underground and the Krzysztofory Palace, the National Museum runs the Cloth Hall gallery, and St Mary’s parish runs the basilica.

• The Palace Ticket at the Krzysztofory is 45 PLN (35 PLN reduced) and adds the temporary exhibition.
• Last admission: 30 minutes before closing at the Cloth Hall gallery, and 17:00 at the Krzysztofory Palace.
• The Kraków Card covers the gallery, the Town Hall Tower, the Underground and the palace, but not the basilica. See the Kraków Card guide.
• Closed: the Town Hall Tower on 1 and 11 November, the gallery and the palace on Mondays, and the Underground on the second Monday of the month.
• A “Medieval Kraków” route ticket covers the Underground, the Town Hall Tower, the Barbican and the City Defence Walls.

Tours worth paying for

The square’s sights are self-guided, and the basilica has no ticket on GetYourGuide. The walks below start in the Old Town. Prices are GetYourGuide’s lowest “from” prices, per person.

The Old Town walking tour

From £14 · 4.8 stars from 1,050 reviews · 2.5 hours

Krakow: The Old Town Walking Tourad is a guided walk through the Old Town, with its Renaissance palaces and churches.

The Old Town and Wawel

From £20 · 4.8 stars from 838 reviews · 2.5 hours

Kraków: Old Town & Wawel Castle Walking Tour in Englishad adds Wawel Castle to the square. Wawel’s own tickets are separate: see Wawel Castle tickets.

Inside the Underground

From £30 · 4.6 stars from 1,442 reviews · 1.5 to 2 hours

Krakow: Rynek Underground Museum Guided Tourad is a skip-the-line guided tour of the museum below the square.

The Town Hall Tower and the Cloth Hall on the Main Market Square. Photo: Fred Romero, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

What to see

The Main Market Square was laid out in 1257, when the city was chartered. The basilica’s altar opening at 11:50 is the one fixed time, so plan round it: on a Sunday the basilica opens at 14:00 and the altar at 14:10.

1. The Town Hall Tower, at 10:00. The tower is 75 m high, and the viewing point under its spire is reached by 110 steps of different heights. The earliest records of the town hall date from 1316, and the town clock was installed on the tower in 1524.
2. The Cloth Hall. The stalls on the ground floor need no ticket. The first-floor gallery shows 19th-century Polish art in rooms named for Bacciarelli, Michałowski, Siemiradzki and Chełmoński. Siemiradzki’s Nero’s Torches, given in 1879, was the founding piece of the National Museum, and the rooms hold Matejko’s Wernyhora, Michałowski’s Somosierra, Chełmoński’s Four-in-Hand and Podkowiński’s Ecstasy.
3. St Mary’s Basilica, at 11:50. The Veit Stoss altar opens at 11:50, and the hejnał is played from the north tower every hour. See the basilica guide.
4. The Rynek Underground. The museum shows the medieval square below ground, from the 10th-century cemetery to the 1257 charter, and takes about 75 minutes. See the Underground guide.
5. The Krzysztofory Palace (Rynek Główny 35). Its permanent exhibition is “Krakow from the beginning, to no end”, and it houses the Museum of Kraków’s visitor centre.

The Krzysztofory Palace at Rynek Główny 35. Photo: Zygmunt Put, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

What to skip: the Krzysztofory Palace, if you have one morning. Its exhibition covers the whole city, and the tower, the altar and the Underground are about the square.

The City Gates Opening Ceremony, held from Tuesday to Sunday, begins with a procession from St Mary’s Basilica a few minutes after 10:00, and runs along Floriańska Street to the Barbican.

Hours, rules and getting there

• Bags: the Underground takes no rucksacks or luggage over 30 litres.
• The basilica asks visitors to stay silent and to use the south door.
• Getting there: the square is the centre of the Old Town. Wawel Castle is a 10-minute walk from it.

Wawel Castle and Kazimierz are the next sights to the south. The gallery, the tower, the Underground and the palace are on the Kraków Card, and free on Tuesdays in free museum days in Kraków. Museums in Kraków lists the rest of the National Museum and the Museum of Kraków. For the rest of the city’s bookings, see what to book before you go to Kraków. 3 days in Kraków and Kraków in one day build the plan round the square. To sleep nearby, hotels near the Main Market Square lists the hotels beside it, and where to eat in Kraków lists places to eat. Chopin concerts in Kraków cover an evening, and Kraków walking tours start from the square. In winter the Kraków Christmas market fills the square.