St. Mary's Basilica & The Trumpeter's Broken Call

Why is it significant?

Stand in Plac Mariacki before the striking, uneven twin brick towers of St. Mary's Basilica. If you look up toward the octagonal spire of the taller eighty-two-meter tower on the hour, you will see a small golden trumpet emerge from a high window, playing the five-note melody of the Hejnał Mariacki…

Key Facts

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Stand in Plac Mariacki before the striking, uneven twin brick towers of St. Mary's Basilica. If you look up toward the octagonal spire of the taller eighty-two-meter tower on the hour, you will see a small golden trumpet emerge from a high window, playing the five-note melody of the Hejnał Mariacki across all four compass directions.

Listen closely: every single time the song plays, the melody abruptly cuts off in mid-note! According to beloved Kraków lore, during the thirteenth-century Mongol siege, a brave town watchman spotted the approaching horde from the tower and sounded his trumpet to warn the sleeping citizens. Before he could finish the tune, an archer's arrow pierced his throat. In his honor, every town trumpeter since has broken off the melody at that exact tragic note.

Inside the basilica sits one of the greatest masterpieces of late Gothic woodcarving: Veit Stoss's monumental wooden Pentaptych altarpiece, completed in fourteen eighty-nine from five-hundred-year-old linden trees, with over two hundred realistic carved figures.

During World War Two, the Nazis looted the altar and hid it in Nuremberg Castle, but it was recovered and restored after the war. Now turn down św. Anny Street toward Collegium Maius.