St Florian's Gate
Trail of War
A medieval city gate with a tower, a surviving part of Kraków's old defensive walls. It was one of the city's eight defensive gates and closes Floriańska Street at its northern end.
History
St Florian's Gate closes off Floriańska Street to the north and is a surviving part of the medieval city walls; written sources mention it from 1307. The road to Kleparz ran through the gate, and this is also where the Royal Route leading to Wawel began. The gate is 34.5 metres high, and above the entrance on the Planty Park side is the Piast eagle, a relief by Zygmunt Langman based on a design by Jan Matejko, which replaced an earlier eagle in 1882. The gate was saved from demolition several times. In 1817 Feliks Radwański persuaded the senate of the Free City of Kraków to preserve parts of the walls, and in 1882 Prince Władysław Czartoryski decided to set up a family chapel in the tower above the gate, which was completed in 1889.
Did you know?
Demolition of the gate was planned once more at the beginning of the 20th century, because the line of the new electric tram ran through it and the tram did not fit. In the end the passage was lowered and the gate stayed. The narrow-gauge trams that ran this way were withdrawn by the early 1950s.