Błonia w Krakowie

This guide to Błonia in Kraków connects the quiet meadow around you, common pasture for cows well into the 1960s, to a single day in June 1979 when it filled with the largest crowd Poland had ever gathered, for an open-air Mass led by a man who had grown up walking these very streets. You'll hear how a nobleman named Jaksa gave the land to a convent in 1162, and how the swampy, flood-prone field was once even used to bury cholera victims. Listen for how quiet it is now, birdsong over open grass, and imagine what carried across it that day.