Salwator luxury surrounded by greenery

drone shots

Note: article translated using automatic translator DeepL

Salwator is a very interesting and picturesque place, located almost in the center of Krakow. Formally Salwator is not an independent administrative unit, as it is part of district VII Zwierzyniec, but it is such an exceptional and unique point on the city map that it can be treated as such.

The Zwierzyniec village area has been inhabited since the early Middle Ages, but has only been developed in an organized manner since the beginning of the 20th century. It is located on a sloping hillside, so to speak, at the culmination of the Bielany-Tyniec Landscape Park, specifically the Sowiniec range and the massif of Mount St. Bronislawa, and its boundaries are marked by the Rudawa River flowing into the Vistula along with a vast Norbertine monastery. In the Salwator area, researchers have found during archaeological work numerous traces of settlements dating back to nearly 110,000 BC, discovering mammoth hunting huts once located there (25,000 BC).  It is very likely that even before the period of invasion by Christians of the area, there was a settlement with its own temple in Salvatore, as the name of one of the streets may suggest; Gontyna (a type of sacred building in the Slavic religion). From the second half of the 12th century until 1910, Zwierzyniec was owned by the Norbertine Order, when the village was incorporated into Krakow on the initiative of President Juliusz Leo.

Between 1866 and 1867, the Austrians erected structures on the hill that were part of the Krakow Fortress, the FS-30 and FS-1 (Feld Schanze – field entrenchment) entrenchments. However, as early as 1907, the land on which these structures were located was transferred to the city, which in 1909 decided to dismantle the entrenchments, allocating the area for future investments. The villa estate we know today, located near Kosciuszko Mound, began to emerge when the Clerks’ Society decided to develop the area and held a competition for the development of the hill, which was won in 1909 by Tadeusz Niedzielski’s design. Eventually, however, Roman Bandurski’s design was put into practice, and it is to him that we owe the current shape of Salwator. In 1911, St. Bronislawa Street, Anczyca Street and Gontyna Street were laid out.

During the more than 100 years of its existence, the aforementioned estate, was inhabited by many prominent figures connected with Krakow. Through Salwator, St. Bronislawa Street and Washington Avenue, runs a well-known and popular walking route leading to the Kosciuszko Mound, and further in the direction of Wolski Forest and the Cracow Zoo.

It is definitely worth, at least once, to take a walk around Salwator, get to know its unique buildings, see the beautiful old villas, which we encourage you to do. Below you will find an aerial photo gallery of this unique place.

Salwator monuments:

• The Church of the Most Holy Salvatore, from which the villa neighborhood derives its name. According to some researchers, this church is one of the oldest and first Christian churches in Poland and its exact time of construction is unknown, dating it to the 12th century.
• The chapel of St. Margaret and St. Judith Surrounding the chapel is a former plague cemetery (for those who died of the plague).
• Villas of the Salwator estate, some of which are considered historic.
• Church of St. Augustine and St. John the Baptist with the Norbertine convent.
• Salwator cemetery.

View from the village of Zwierzyniec of the Norbertine nunnery, taken at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries by Natan Krieger and therefore before Salwator was built and developed in its present form as we know it. A comparison of the two shots of the archival one and the contemporary one taken from a drone. Reproduction of the original shot is not possible today. 

Contemporary aerial shots

Archival photographs from the collection of the Museum of Krakow