Literature on Planty

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Kraków Planty is a public garden bursting with literary associations. You can find monuments standing in quiet clusters of trees which refer to 19th-century Polish classics and their peculiar symbolism. They include a monument to a mythical Slavic bard Boyan erected in memory of Bohdan Zaleski, a romantic poet who identified himself with the legendary hero. The monument to the heroine of Juliusz Słowacki’s drama, the threatening and mysterious Lilla Weneda, stands nearby. There is also a monument commemorating a quite unorthodox couple from Grażyna, a poem by Adam Mickiewicz, with Litawor the knight recumbent in a sign of melancholy and his brave wife Grażyna stooping over her husband clad in a full suit of armour. You will also find busts of Kraków writers from the late 19th and early 20th century, notably Michał Bałucki and Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński.

Nonetheless, majority of writers connected with Kraków are commemorated in a more functional, modern manner. As part of the project City Codes run by Kraków Festival Office, many benches along the Planty have been granted literary patrons. They include authors who lived and worked in Kraków and those whose connections to the city are much less obvious. The panels on the benches include the names of Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, Julian Przyboś, Stanisław Lem, Jerzy Pilch, Joseph Conrad, Georg Trakl, Herta Müller, Eduard Mendoza, Svetlana Alexievich, and over a hundred others. Each inscription features a QR code beside the name of the author. Scanning it brings you to a website with an excerpt from the author and lets you listen to it recorded in Polish and another language (usually English). The website also features an interactive map which will help you to find all the literary benches as well as the most important literary addresses in the city.

About: disabled-friendly, admission free
For whom: for children
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