The Main Market Square was laid out in 1257, when Kraków was chartered under Magdeburg law, and its outline has barely changed since. Each side runs roughly two hundred metres, which for centuries made it the largest market square in medieval Europe.
The Cloth Hall stands in the middle, remodelled in the sixteenth century and topped with a decorative parapet. Beside it is the Town Hall Tower, all that remains of a town hall demolished in 1820. St Mary’s Basilica dominates the north-east corner, and a bugle call is played from its taller tower every hour. The square also holds the smallest church in Kraków, Romanesque St Adalbert’s, which stood here before the square existed.
Beneath the paving is a museum built into the excavation of the medieval market. The square is usually both the first and the last stop of a tour, because everything else is within walking distance.