Discover Kraków Culture

All events planned for weekends in August will be held in a family, picnic atmosphere and have been prepared by a coalition of Cracovian festivals, projects and cultural institutions.

We are not shying away from important issues facing humankind today: organisers of the BNP Paribas Green Film Festival discuss the urgent need for an alliance between culture and environmental movements at this time when our planet’s future is in balance. A fear of the future is also the motif of the International Print Triennial and its main exhibition at the Nowa Huta Cultural Centre. The Jewish Culture Festival has been exploring multiculturalism and ways of harmonious coexistence since its very beginning; this year the organisers are also looking at women’s role in the art and culture of Jewish diaspora. The finale of the multicultural project Orfeo & Majnun, interrupted last year by the outbreak of the pandemic, features workshops, demonstrations and projections.

If you are feeling lost among the myriad languages shouted at us all by the contemporary world, poetry comes to the rescue. According to the British/Trinidadian poet Anthony Joseph, it is “an umbrella term for a range of aesthetic discourses. Like ‘music’ or ‘literature’. There is poetry in jazz, in painting, in writing and performance. It’s a destination rather than a static space.” Agi Mishol, another guest at this year’s Miłosz Festival, adds, “Poets, who are attentive to words, are the seismographs of language.” And the Podgórze Museum presents its own commentary on the present day with the exhibition Coexistence – a collective description of life under the pandemic.

We dress up words in the present and turn to the future while never forgetting our heritage.

This year we are making the 500th anniversary of the hanging of the Sigismund Bell at Wawel Cathedral with a series of events prepared through a collaboration between the cities of Kraków and Nuremberg – as was the case when the bell was cast all those centuries ago. As usual, Cracovia Sacra Night is a perfect opportunity to visit collections rarely open to the public, while Kraków’s extensive collection of Japanese art goes on show as the exhibition Hokusai. Wandering… at the National Museum.