Cracow
kra'ko, an ancient Polish city. It is situated on the Vistula, at the head of navigation. It was the capital of Poland from 1320 to 1609. Even after the removal of the capital to Warsaw the kings were crowned here, just as the czar of Russia is crowned at Moscow. The cathedral, completed in 1359, is the burial place of the kings and the national heroes of the Polish people. The chapels are decorated with a number of fine monuments and notable works of sculpture, among others a Christ by Thorwaldsen. A silver shrine of St. Stanislaus, the patron saint of Poland, stands in the middle of the church. Other noted buildings are the Church of St. Mary, the Tuchhaus, or Cloth Hall, and the Museum. The University of Cracow, in which Copernicus was a student, was founded in 1364. At the dismemberment of Poland it fell gradually into decay, but was reorganized in 1817. It has a fine library of 300,000 volumes. A monument of Kosciusko, 120 feet in height, stands on a hill near the city. Cracow is the metropolis of Austrian Poland. Population in 1907, 104,836, one-fifth of the number being Jews.
Near Cracow is a most remarkable salt mine. It is a veritable underground world. The mine has been worked for a thousand years. Story after story has been excavated, one beneath the other. Each floor rests on salt pillars rising from the floor below it. Visitors go down from floor to floor amid dazzling whiteness. A thousand men are employed. There are sixty-five miles of halls, and galleries and twenty-two miles of tramways. Bags and barrels of salt are piled up in ricks, like those seen in a flouring mill. A village has been built underground. Men, women, and children, beasts of burden and domestic animals, live there generation after generation. A large chapel or church 100 feet high has been carved out of the salt. There are seats, pillars, an altar, and statues, all of glistening rock-salt.