Krakow

Poland's old royal capital and one of the best-preserved historic cities in Europe, spared the wartime destruction that flattened so much of the country. Its heart is the Main Market Square, the largest medieval square in Europe, laid out under the town charter of twelve fifty-seven, with St Mary's Church and its hourly trumpet call and the long Cloth Hall running down the middle. Above the Vistula rises Wawel, the hill where kings were crowned and buried, and just to the south lies Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter emptied by the Holocaust and vividly alive again. Read the royal city at your own pace, under the towers.