Kraków Gate

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Former Yaroslavl, like any city at that time, was surrounded by city walls to protect its residents from invading enemy armies. The initiator of the creation of defensive walls around the city was Spytko (or Spytek) Yaroslavl of the Leliwa coat of arms, Sandomierz voivode, starosta general of Rus and participant in the Battle of Grunwald. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, he was the lord of Yaroslavl.

There were three gates in the walls of Yaroslavl. They were called: Lviv Gate, Sandomierz Gate and Lviv Gate. The Krakowska Gate was built in the first half of the sixteenth century. It was the most impressive and representative gate, having as many as three stories, and was crowned with a Renaissance attic. It constituted the entrance to the city from the side of the so-called Krakowskie Przedmieście. The gate was demolished as a result of Austrian actions in the eighteenth century.

During demolition work on two tenements located near the gate, a two-story cellar of the Krakow Gate was discovered, where, according to accounts of the time, townsmen served their sentences. In the discovered dungeons, drawings were found on bricks, resembling scratched coats of arms or family marks of the townsfolk. A considerable amount of pottery was also found among the excavations. A fragment of the Krakow Gate has been successfully reconstructed so that tourists can admire it. Nearby you can also see relics of the city walls, as well as the remains of a moat and rampart. The work was started for a very mundane reason - the walls of the townhouses simply began to crack, and who would have expected to find so many treasures.

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