Wroclaw Travel Guide: Discovering the Dwarves and Market Square

My final stop in Poland is the fourth largest city called Wroclaw. I decided to make it an overnighter just to break up the bus trip to Dresden, Germany, and I’m glad I did.

The 3 hour 15-minute trip ended up taking an extra 30 minutes because of slowed traffic due to an accident just outside Krakow.

This city is all about dwarves. Yes, Dwarves. They are called krasnale. There are over 600 dwarf figurines in the city. With that many out there, I won’t be finding them all, but I did come across quite a few. There are maps that I could have bought for 8 Euro that show the locations of the dwarves.

The Dwarf that started it all. The symbol for the Orange Alternative, a Polish anti-communist movement.

The old city here was a bit smaller than Warsaw and Krakov, with the main chunk of it surrounding Market Square. It claims to be one of the largest market squares in Europe and it has two of the countries largest city halls.

Just as in Kracow, in the center of Market Square is Cloth Hall and Town Hall. Unlike Kracow, the entire town hall is here, not just a tower.

Cloth Hall center left. Town Hall center right.

On all sides of the square are stunning and colorful townhouses.

The colors here seemed stronger than the other cities.

On one street, there is the Phoenix (Fenix) Department store, which was originally the Barasch Brothers’ Department store, that opened in 1902. They were a Jewish family, and seeing the way the wind was blowing under Nazi influence, they sold their branches.

My favorite was Zloty Pies, which is actually a brewery.

As with the other Polish cities, there are plenty of churches to wander by and inside of.

On the opposite side of the town is the Wroclaw Market Hall, 1906. Think of the first shopping center. It was one of two halls meant to organize street trade in the city center. It is still in operation as a produce market.

In the same area is the Warclaw Puppet Theatre and Opera House. Both buildings are goreous to look at. The puppet theater is Neo-Baroque, designed in 1892 and expanded in 1905.

The Opera House is a little older at 1841.

Across from the Opera House is the 5 star hotel, Monopol Hotel. It dates back to 1892 and is built over the former St. Dorothy’s Church Graveyard, which had been transformed into a jail in 1817. There have to be ghost stories here. Oh, and Hitler stayed here in room 113.