The name Salwator took hold in the early twentieth century, from the villa estate built near the Church of the Holy Saviour. Before that people spoke of Zwierzyniec and Półwsie Zwierzynieckie, among the oldest settlements outside Kraków. Zwierzyniec kept its independence until 1910, when it was absorbed into the city.
Several threads run through the district at once. The Norbertine convent has stood here since the twelfth century, and it is from its courtyard that the Lajkonik pageant sets off during the octave of Corpus Christi. Facing the Romanesque Church of the Holy Saviour stands the Gontyna, a seventeenth-century wooden church of St Margaret and St Judith, one of the finest pieces of timber architecture in the city.
The street names tell the history by themselves: Włóczków and Flisacka after the raftsmen who floated timber down the Vistula, Mlaskotów after the village musicians who accompanied the Lajkonik, and Senatorska, once called Cow Street, along which cattle were still driven to the Błonia meadows in the 1960s.