Water Dragon
Dragon Trail
The dragon stands on Na Groblach Square, close to the Vistula and Wawel Hill.
History
The Water Dragon, holding a fish in its paw, stands on Na Groblach Square. In the past there was a pond in the middle of the square, which also served as a Vistula river port. In the Middle Ages dykes cut off a wide bend of the Vistula here, and fish ponds were created in it. Once the ponds and marshes had been drained, horses were traded on the square on Tuesdays, and at the end of the 19th century tenement houses and the building of the Bartłomiej Nowodworski I High School went up around it. The water is recalled by plaques set into a fragment of the former Royal Brewery, showing the levels of the great floods of 1813, 1876 and 1903.
Did you know?
According to one version of the legend, the Wawel Dragon drowned in the nearby marshes known as Żabikruk. Ksawery Pruszyński and Piotr Skrzynecki lived in tenement houses on the square.