Rynek Główny

This guide to the Rynek Główny in Kraków starts with the broken trumpet call that sounds from Saint Mary's tower every hour, and the medieval legend of a sentry cut down by a Mongol arrow in 1341. It traces how historians chased that story back to its source, an American children's book from 1928, and found the trail thinner than expected. One of the tower's real trumpeters died at his post in the winter of 1901, and kings once swore their allegiance in the square below.