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Down ul. Grodzka, past the gilded stone lion above the Kamienica Podelwie (House Under the Lion; no. 32), the oldest such stone emblem in the city, turn right into ul. Poselska to find the house, at no. 12, where novelist Joseph Conrad spent his childhood: a commemorative plaque in the corner carries a quotation from his work. Further down ul. Poselska, through the garden entrance at no. 3 and past the top of ul. Senacka, is the Muzeum Archeologiczne (Archeological Museum; Mon-Wed 9am-2pm, Thurs 2-6pm, Fri & Sun 10am-2pm; 7zl; free on Thurs). Housed in a building with a chequered history - it was originally an early medieval stronghold, then successively a palace, monastery and Habsburg-era prison, before becoming a museum - the collections feature an array of Egyptian, Greek and Roman objects alongside a large group of local finds, including an extensive set of Neolithic painted ceramics considered to be among the best in Europe. Even if you're not totally sold on hoards of old coins and pottery there's one totally unmissable object here, the famed figure of a pagan Slavonic god, known as Swiatowit , the only image of a Slav pagan deity ever discovered. An extraordinary carved stone idol standing 2.5m high and sporting what looks like a top hat, its crude decoration includes a face on each side (one for each of the winds, it is thought). The route south continues down ul. Grodzka, past another run of churches before ending up at the busy crossroads in the shadow of Wawel. The first, the austere twin-domed Kosciol sw. Piotra i Pawla (Church of SS Peter and Paul), a little way back from the street, is fronted by imposing statues of the two Apostles, actually copies of the pollution-scarred originals, now kept elsewhere for preservation's sake. The church's exterior recently received a thorough cleanup, the much reduced pollution levels in the inner city meaning that the distinctive statues should be able to keep their current shine for a while to come. Modelled on the Gesu in Rome, it's the earliest Baroque building in the city, commissioned by the Jesuits when they came to Krakow in the 1580s to quell Protestant agitation. A notable feature here is the crypt of Piotr Skarga (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm; 3zl) down the steps in front of the altar, where there are piles of slips of paper filled with the prayers of the devout. A noted Jesuit preacher and Polish champion of the Counter-Reformation, Skarga delivered anti-Protestant sermons here at the close of the sixteenth century. Fine stucco work by Giovanni Falconi in the chapels on either side of the nave helps to relieve the severity of the place. Immediately in front of the church stands one of Krakow's more controversial cultural monuments, a statue of Skarga erected in 2001 to provide a focal point for the recently tidied-up plaza that leads from here through to ul. Kanoniczna. A clumsy piece of work which makes the much revered priest look more like a comic-book superhero than a spiritual leader, the sculpture is totally out of keeping with the Baroque splendours that surround it, and has proved profoundly unpopular with the krakowski cultural elite as a consequence. Next comes the Romanesque Kosciol sw. Andrzeja (St Andrew's Church), remodelled in familiar Polish Baroque style, where the local people are reputed to have holed themselves up and successfully fought off marauding Tatars during the invasion of 1241; it looks just about strong enough for the purpose. The early-thirteenth-century mosaic icon of the Virgin from Constantinople stored in the Treasury is credited with having helped out. A little further on, Kosciol sw. Marcina (St Martin's Church), built in the seventeenth century on the site of a Romanesque foundation, now belongs to Krakow's small Lutheran community.
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