Kłodzko Market Square

What makes it special

Look up at the square tower first: it is the only part of the earlier town hall still standing. Ewald Berger, an architect from Nowa Ruda, designed the present building around it after the fire of 1886.

On the facade, a clock is held up by a sculpted lion from the town's coat of arms. Sculptures of two young men stand in front of the entrance.

The Marian column was a votive offering after a town fire and the plague that reached Kłodzko in the spring of 1680. A stone balustrade with a gate in the middle surrounds it, and four saints stand on pedestals along it.

The fountain stands on the town's public well, which dates from the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is carved with dolphins.

At No. 5, a deer carved in full relief lies in a niche on a ground-floor pier, and the house takes its name, Pod Jeleniem, from it.

Visiting

For a map, start at the tourist information point in the entrance pavilion of the Underground Tourist Route on ul. Czeska. It is not in the town hall.

On the square, begin at the Marian column on the west side of the town hall and walk round its balustrade. Then follow the hall to its main entrance, with the fountain directly opposite, and look above the balcony for the Kłodzko arms, a crowned lion with a double tail.

The pillory on the square is a replica, set on the spot where the medieval one stood. Then find No. 5, Pod Jeleniem.

Finish by going up toward the fortress to the walking path under its walls, and look back for the square clock tower above the roofs.