Kraków

Casimir III left the city two foundations that outlasted him: Kazimierz, the new town he laid out beside it in 1335, and the university of 1364, the second in Central Europe after Prague. The university faltered after his death until Queen Jadwiga bequeathed her jewels to it and her husband Władysław Jagiełło refounded it in 1400. Under the Jagiellonian kings Kraków drew artists, scholars and printers from across Europe: the first work printed in Poland came off a press here in 1473, Copernicus studied at the university, and the Jews of Kazimierz built the synagogues of a thriving quarter.

The city's fortunes turned when the Jagiellonian line died out in 1572 and Sigismund III moved his court to Warsaw in 1596. Swedish troops besieged and plundered Kraków in 1655. In 1794 Tadeusz Kościuszko proclaimed his insurrection in the Main Square, and its defeat brought the final partition of Poland, which gave the city to Austria. After Napoleon's fall the Congress of Vienna made it the Free City of Kraków, a small, partly independent and neutral state.