The urban heritage of Krakow, or about the book Maps of the City. Heritages and the Sacred within Kraków’s City Scape

Abstract

The text discusses a book, edited by Anna Niedźwiedź and Kaja Kaider, on the interpenetrating spheres of cultural heritage and the sacred of Krakow. The authors of the book focus on the material urban heritage, which still seems to be an underrated resource of the past. In the presented anthropological understanding of it, material objects not only reveal a whole range of meanings that help shape the city’s genius loci and the identities of its inhabitants and visitors associated with it, but also constitute a cognitive value in a strictly historical dimension. Under an anthropological scrutiny, stately buildings and small souvenirs gain an importance equal to that of written historical sources, while the titular heritage and the sacred show their unbreakable unity. It is also noteworthy that the book is a printed equivalent of an exhibition on the same subject that took place in the Krakow ethnographic museum.