Great Market
Rynek Wielki
Interesting facts
- Two main axes cross the town plan through the Great Market Square, about 600 metres long from east to west and 400 metres from north to south.
- Because it was laid out by an Italian architect on Italian models, Zamość has often been called the new Padua.
- Jan Zamoyski founded an academy here in 1594, the third institution of higher learning in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
- The fortified town withstood a Cossack siege under Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1648 and resisted the Swedish army during the Deluge in 1656.
- The town hall was rebuilt between 1639 and 1651 by the builders Jan Jaroszewicz and Jan Wolff.
- The Under the Angel house, built in the early 1630s by the merchant Gabriel Bartoszewicz, bears a carving of his namesake, the Archangel Gabriel.
- The Under the Married Couple house on the north side was built in the second quarter of the seventeenth century by the Armenian merchant Torosz.
- The revolutionary theorist Rosa Luxemburg was born in Zamość in 1871, and the Yiddish writer I. L. Peretz in 1852.
- In 1942 the German occupiers designated the area Himmlerstadt and later Pflugstadt, but neither name survived the war.
Why it is worth it
The Great Market Square of Zamość is a perfect square, 100 m on each side, enclosed by arcaded houses painted in strong colours and dominated by a Mannerist town hall whose fan-shaped double staircase spills out onto the paving. It is the centrepiece of one of the most complete Renaissance towns in Europe, a city planned on paper and built in a single sweep at the end of the 16th century.
Zamość was founded in 1580 by Jan Zamoyski, Grand Chancellor and Hetman of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, who wanted an ideal city on the trade route between western Europe and the Black Sea. He commissioned the Paduan architect Bernardo Morando, who laid out the town on an anthropomorphic scheme: the Zamoyski palace as its head, Grodzka Street as its spine crossing the Great Market from east to west, and the Salt and Water markets opening to the north and south. Unusually, the town hall does not stand in the middle of the square but on its northern side, pushed slightly forward, so as not to compete with the founder's palace. Morando designed it at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries; it was enlarged in 1639 to 1651, gained its staircase in the 18th century and its slender crowning dome in 1770, with the clock tower reaching 52 m.
Around the square, the houses stand on arcades. The finest are the so-called Armenian houses on the north side, built in the first half of the 17th century and topped with decorative parapets and reliefs, among them the house Under the Madonna. Other houses carry figures of Saint Casimir or of Minerva and Hercules, and on the east side the Apteka Rektorska, a pharmacy in a 17th-century house, is still in business. The old town of Zamość, with its streets, squares and fortifications, has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1992.
Getting there
The Great Market Square lies at the heart of the old town of Zamość. The nearest airport is Lublin Airport (LUZ), about 69 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
50.71690, 23.25220per Wikidata