DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.25050#0047
i;. View of Cracow from the northwest, woodcut, 1581
Sigismund III Vasa was the last king to reside permanently in
Cracow, but in 1609 he left the city and effectively moved the
royal residence to Warsaw, though Cracow remained the lawful
capital until the partitions period. It also continued as the site
of coronations and the burial place for kings and their families.
Nonetheless, the removal of the centre of power to Warsaw halted
social and urban development in Cracow. In terms of territory and
population, it was not until the nineteenth century that Cracow
matched its size in the Renaissance period.
During the sixteenth century, the number of inhabitants still
grew, reaching about 20,000. The population declined was with
the plague of 1651 and the Swedish invasion. The ethnic compo-
sition of the city changed rapidly. The formerly very strong
German element was quickly becoming polonized. The remo-
val in 1537 of services with German-language sermons from
St Mary’s to much-smaller St Barbara’s was a telltale sign of that.
Cracow, and especially Kazimierz, became an important centre for
Jewish culture. There was a new wave of immigration from Italy;
in the fifteenth century there had been only two Italian families,
but in the first half of the sixteenth century there were 24, and in
1550-1650 - 187. The Italian arrivals usually set up in trade or
finances, but many of them were architects, stoneworkers and
sculptors, who introduced new forms into Polish art. Some
families such as the Provanos and Montelupis (the founders of
the Polish postal system), or the Soderinis and Cellaris, came
to prominence and had large business dealings with the royal
court.
Emerging from the Middle Ages as a dynamic centre of
commerce and craft, Cracow had all the makings of a modern ma-
nufacturing city. In sixteenth-century Cracow and its environs,
production flourished in fields like mining (salt, lead, iron ore),
metallurgy, textiles, ceramics, glassworking, papercraft and
printing; and, of course, traditional crafts like tanning, ironwork,
armsmaking, goldsmithing, shoemaking, etc. Antiquated organi-
zational and social forms no longer sufficed in a period of rapid
change at the dawn of the modern era, and since the political
system exclusively favoured the nobles and their principal occupa-
tion, farming, the burghers found it difficult to adopt to the
44
45
Sigismund III Vasa was the last king to reside permanently in
Cracow, but in 1609 he left the city and effectively moved the
royal residence to Warsaw, though Cracow remained the lawful
capital until the partitions period. It also continued as the site
of coronations and the burial place for kings and their families.
Nonetheless, the removal of the centre of power to Warsaw halted
social and urban development in Cracow. In terms of territory and
population, it was not until the nineteenth century that Cracow
matched its size in the Renaissance period.
During the sixteenth century, the number of inhabitants still
grew, reaching about 20,000. The population declined was with
the plague of 1651 and the Swedish invasion. The ethnic compo-
sition of the city changed rapidly. The formerly very strong
German element was quickly becoming polonized. The remo-
val in 1537 of services with German-language sermons from
St Mary’s to much-smaller St Barbara’s was a telltale sign of that.
Cracow, and especially Kazimierz, became an important centre for
Jewish culture. There was a new wave of immigration from Italy;
in the fifteenth century there had been only two Italian families,
but in the first half of the sixteenth century there were 24, and in
1550-1650 - 187. The Italian arrivals usually set up in trade or
finances, but many of them were architects, stoneworkers and
sculptors, who introduced new forms into Polish art. Some
families such as the Provanos and Montelupis (the founders of
the Polish postal system), or the Soderinis and Cellaris, came
to prominence and had large business dealings with the royal
court.
Emerging from the Middle Ages as a dynamic centre of
commerce and craft, Cracow had all the makings of a modern ma-
nufacturing city. In sixteenth-century Cracow and its environs,
production flourished in fields like mining (salt, lead, iron ore),
metallurgy, textiles, ceramics, glassworking, papercraft and
printing; and, of course, traditional crafts like tanning, ironwork,
armsmaking, goldsmithing, shoemaking, etc. Antiquated organi-
zational and social forms no longer sufficed in a period of rapid
change at the dawn of the modern era, and since the political
system exclusively favoured the nobles and their principal occupa-
tion, farming, the burghers found it difficult to adopt to the
44
45