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The medieval Sukiennice , rebuilt in the 1550s, is one of the most distinctive sights in the country - a vast cloth hall, topped by a sixteenth-century attic dripping with gargoyles whose splendour is heightened by a recently completed cleanup operation, the first in decades. Its commercial traditions are perpetuated by a covered market , which bustles with tourists and street sellers at almost any time of year. Inside, the stalls of the darkened central arcade display a hotchpotch collection of tourist tat and genuine craft items from the Podhale region. Popular buys include amber jewellery, painted boxes in every shape and size and thick woollen sweaters from the mountains. Prices are inevitably inflated, so if you're travelling on to the south, it's better to wait until you get to one of the Tatra-region markets, such as the one in Nowy Targ. The colonnades on either side of the Sukiennice were added in the late nineteenth century in an attempt to smarten up the Rynek and provide a home for a brace of elegant terrace cafes, most famous of which is the Noworolski on the Sukiennice's eastern side. The centre of Krakow social life in the years before World War I (Lenin was one of the more famous regulars), the cafe boasted a series of sumptuously decorated Art-Nouveau salons, of which one - with a separate entrance from the rest - was a ladies'-only tea room. The cafe was confiscated by the Nazis in 1939 and made into a German-only club, but resumed its status as Krakow's prime coffee-and-cakes venue after the war. Many of the belle-epoque interiors were renovated in the 1990s, making it well worth a visit - although the locals who used to idle away the afternoon over tea and sernik have been almost totally replaced by tourists. The art gallery on the upper floor of the Sukiennice (Tues, Wed, Fri-Sun 10am-3.30pm Thurs 10am-6pm; 7zl, free on Sun) is worth a visit for its collection of works by nineteenth-century Polish artists, among them Matejko, Malczewski, Gierymski and Chelmonski. The Matejkos here include two political heavyweights, the Homage of Prussia and the stirring Kosciuszko at Raclawice . As usual with Matejko, the impact is heightened if you appreciate the historical reference points, in this case the homage of the Teutonic Knights in 1525 and the Polish peasant army's victory over the Russians in 1794.
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