Krakow Shops To Be
Closed on Most Sundays.
The Polish parliament has passed a bill which phases
in a ban on Sunday shopping.
In 2018 most stores in Poland will stay closed on 23 Sundays,
namely March 11th, March
18th, April 1st, April 8th, April 15th, April 22nd, May 13th,
May 20th, June 10th, June 17th, July 15th, July 22nd, August
12th, August 19th, September 9th, September 16th, September
23rd, October 14th, October 21st, November 11th, November 18th,
and December 9th. In 2019 all shops will be open just on the
last Sunday each month. Whereas in 2020 and later
the Sunday shopping will be allowed only prior to
Christmas, Easter, Corpus Christi, and the
Assumption festival of August 15th. Some pharmacies
and some groceries as well as bakeries, flower
shops, and all gas stations can stay open every
Sunday.
2017: Nearly 13 Million
Visited Krakow.
In 2017 Krakow received 12.9 million visitors, in
that number over three million foreigners while 9.85
million tourists arrived from other parts of Poland.
It’s 750,000 more visitors compared to 2016. The
largest contingent of foreign tourists came from
Germany, namely 13.2 percent of the total figure.
Close second were Britons who made up 13.1 percent
of last year’s foreign travelers in Krakow, followed
by Italians (10.9 percent), Frenchmen (8.5 percent),
and Spaniards (8 percent). In 2016 tourists left in
Krakow 5.48 billion zlotys, an equivalent of about
1.3 billion euro, which amounts to roughly 4.5
percent of the city’s gross product, with
40,000-plus people employed in tourism-related
services.
Krakow National Museum Is to
Get a New Branch.
The National Museum in
Krakow will open a brand-new branch to display its
collections of the Polish design and architecture, from
fashion to furniture to interior decoration. It will be
situated in the recently purchased building of Hotel
Cracovia, opposite the main hall of the Krakow National
Museum. The hotel, completed in 1965, is considered a
good example of the Polish 20th-century modernist
architecture. As the structure requires conversion and
modernization, it will take years to open the new branch
of the National Museum. But as early as next May the
building is to host the first temporary exhibition.
Local Elections This
October.
Krakow local government elections are scheduled for
Sunday, October 21st 2018, the same date as
everywhere in Poland. The incumbent four-term mayor,
Professor Jacek Majchrowski, seeks reelection as the
spearhead of a center-left coalition. The Krakow
voters will vote in the city’s mayor for a five-year
term and cast their votes for the lists of
candidates to the city council, to the provincial
assembly, and to the district councils.
Local Elections Produced
City Council, Mayoral Runoff.
Local elections on October 21st, 2018 have upheld
the current majority in the City Council in Krakow
as a coalition of the centrist Civic Platform party
(Platforma Obywatelska - PO) and center-left
Nowoczesna party plus supporters of the incumbent
mayor have secured 23 seats in the 43-strong body.
Their opponents, the right-wing Law and Justice
party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc – PiS), will have 16
councilors, while the remaining four seats went to a
failed mayoral candidate and his three supporters.
In the concurrent mayoral race no candidate won the
outright majority of votes. In run-off on November
4th the incumbent Jacek Majchrowski will fight Miss
Malgorzata Wassermann, a prominent member of Law and
Justice party and a sitting Member of Parliament.
New City Council, Old
Mayor - Local Elections.
The incumbent Mayor of Krakow Prof. Jacek Majchrowski
got 61.94 percent of votes in the mayoral race
runoff on November 4th and thus he has secured his
5th term in office. His opponent, Miss Malgorzata Wassermann, a prominent member of Law and
Justice party and a sitting Member of Parliament,
scored 38.06 percent. Two weeks earlier the
coalition of the centrist Civic Platform party (Platforma Obywatelska - PO), center-left Nowoczesna
party, and supporters of the Krakow mayor have
secured 23 seats in the 43-strong City Council in
the Krakow local elections on October 21st,
2018.
Their main opponents, the right-wing Law and Justice
party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc – PiS), will
have 16 councilors, while the remaining four seats
went to a failed mayoral candidate and his three
supporters.
The Czartoryski Museum
may reopen before 2020.
The modernization of
The Czartoryski Museum
in Krakow is to be completed in the autumn next
year, so its long overdue reopening may take place -
fingers crossed - in December 2019. For the
meantime, Leonardo's
Lady with an
Ermine
will be exhibited in the National Museum's
main building at 1, 3 Maja street. The Polish
government has bought the
entire collections of The
Princes Czartoryski Museum from The Princes Czartoryski Foundation on December 29th, 2016.
