The Cloth Hall began as a covered row of cloth stalls in the reign of Casimir the Great. After a fire in 1555 it was rebuilt in Renaissance form, gaining the distinctive parapet with carved masks attributed to Santi Gucci. The arcades on the east and west sides were added in the nineteenth century, during a remodelling led by Tomasz Pryliński.
The ground floor still trades, which makes this one of the oldest continuously operating shopping arcades in Europe. Upstairs is the Gallery of Nineteenth-Century Polish Art, part of the National Museum, with works by Matejko, Chełmoński and Siemiradzki.
The building splits the square in two and serves as the obvious landmark: almost every Old Town route passes it, and many go straight through.