Free Walking Tour of the Krakow Jewish Quarter

For five centuries Kazimierz was a separate town, and Kraków's center of Jewish life until the Nazi occupation forced its residents into the ghetto across the river and, from there, to the camps. This walk starts outside the Old Synagogue, the oldest surviving Jewish house of worship in Poland, and traces the district's transformation from medieval trading town to wartime tragedy to today's most creative corner of the city.

Along quiet streets that Steven Spielberg used as a filming location for Schindler's List, your guide points out the Remuh Synagogue and its centuries-old cemetery, the wartime ghetto wall, and the squares where Kazimierz's Jewish and Catholic communities lived side by side for generations. It's a walk that holds grief and revival in the same afternoon — the same courtyards that once emptied out now hold some of Kraków's best bars, galleries and Jewish-style bagel stalls.