Kraków
The Krakow Festival Office
To tell the story of Krakow without a mere mention of the “most beautiful entertainment that the human kind has ever came up with” is like telling the story of Italy while disregarding its cuisine. The first Polish city which won the prestigious title of the UNESCO City of Literature as the seventh location in the world in 2013 is a true trove of history of Polish and world literature and a place that shapes the subsequent generations of writers.
It is the only city in the world, where two laureates of the Nobel Prize for Literature – Wisława Szymborska and Czesław Miłosz – lived and created at the turn of the millennia, and which at the same time can boast centuries-long rich history of ties with the art of literature. Starting with the heritage of the first printing houses and the facilities of the Jagiellonian University – the oldest university in Poland, the breath-taking collections of academic and monastic libraries, following the diverse and eventful legend of the artistic bohème represented by Wyspiański and Young Poland artists, the provocative crimes against proper spelling committed by Jasieński in his futurist wanday manifesto and the followers of the avant-garde traditions, the post-war ferment stirred up by the House of A Hundred Bards on Krupnicza Street, the progressive communities surrounding Tygodnik Powszechny, Znak and Przekrój, which was founded in the City of Kings, the formal experiments of the generation of Mrożek and Zagajewski, which exposed the ins and outs of the totalitarian reality, up to the works of the legend of speculative prose and the patron of the year 2021 – Stanisław Lem – who wrote the majority of his works in the former Polish capital. Suffice to say that we could go on for days, and we would barely skim the surface of it all.
But that is merely the soil, which gave rise to the rich contemporary literary life that sets the rhythm of international events – including Conrad Festival, the largest literary event in Central Europe, which offers a prestigious award for first-time authors, the poetic Miłosz Festival, the autumn Book Fair and dozens of independent bookshops supported by the city. The writers – those who live in Krakow and those, who are associated with the city – publish a lot and they are successful. Just take a look at the recognition Katarzyna Kobylarczyk and Aleksandra Lipczak received for their latest reportages, see the literary renaissance in Nowa Huta thanks to books by Igor Jarek and Elżbieta Łapczyńska, check out Mapa – an exquisite book by Barbara Sadurska, as well as many other stories featuring Krakow to a lesser or higher extent. This can be attributed in a great part to the city and the programmes carried out by the KBF under the auspices of the Krakow UNESCO City of Literature programme.
If you would like to join the fray and live surrounded by heritage – to explore it, expand it further or to re-evaluate it and walk your own path – Krakow is the place for you.
KBF
We are a municipal cultural institution, we work for creative industries development, and support business, cultural tourism, the meetings industry, and leisure industries. KBF is an operator of the Kraków UNESCO City of Literature Program since 2013.