Landmark
Market Square
The Rynek: Wrocław's Market Square, laid out after 1241, rebuilt after 1945, with the Town Hall in the middle.
Szczecinolog Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0
What it is
The Market Square is the centre of the medieval town. It was laid out after the destruction of 1241 as the middle of a regular grid.
The Town Hall does not stand on the edge but in the middle, among a block of other buildings, with the houses of the burghers around the outside.
The houses
Rebuilt after 1945.
The buildings around the square were damaged in 1945 and rebuilt afterwards.
On the square
The pillory. The pręgierz is a post to which convicted people were tied. The one by the Town Hall was put up in 1492, in place of an earlier pillory of wood, and the original was topped by a figure of an executioner holding a sword and a bundle of rods, called Roland. It was destroyed in 1945; what stands there now is a copy, set up in 1985. Wrocławians use it as a place to meet.
Jacek Halicki Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0
The Fredro monument. Leonard Marconi's bronze of the playwright Aleksander Fredro was made for Akademicki Square in Lwów and unveiled there in 1897. It shows him seated, a pen in his right hand. After the war it came to Wrocław, as the Panorama did: dismantled in Lwów, held for a time at Wilanów outside Warsaw, delivered to the square on 27 April 1956 and unveiled on 15 July that year, the eightieth anniversary of Fredro's death.
It stands on the southern side of the square, in front of the Town Hall, on the spot where an equestrian monument to Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia stood until it was taken down just after the war.
The pen does not stay in his hand. The city replaces it, on average, more than a dozen times a year; the replacement is a resin replica and costs about 600 złotys to make and fit.
Pudelek Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0
The Zdrój fountain. A fountain of glass panes stands on Gołębi Square, the western part of the Market Square. It was designed by the sculptor Alojzy Gryt and put up in 2001. Zdrój means a spring, and the name is also the city's joke on Bogdan Zdrojewski, its mayor when the fountain was built.
Adaś17 Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0
The guitar record. On 1 May the square fills with guitarists playing Jimi Hendrix's “Hey Joe” together. It started on 10 May 2003, when 588 of them turned up, and it is Leszek Cichoński's doing — he is still its artistic director. It is called the Gitarowy Rekord Świata now, the Guitar World Record, and the most who have ever played it is 8,122, in 2025. In 2026 7,649 came and the record stood.
The name used to say Guinness, and the change is worth a sentence. The figure Guinness World Records still holds for the largest guitar ensemble was set on this square on 1 May 2009, and it is 6,346 — the attempts have been bigger than the ratified record for years.
Nietoksyczny Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0
The square in photographs
.jpg){kind=link}
Seeing it
The Town Hall has its own page, Town Hall, and the rest of the landmarks are listed on the landmarks page.