It might be hard to believe but the young reprobates you see staggering out of Kraków’s student bars actually represent Poland’s educational elite. Kraków’s Jagiellonian is rated Poland’s best university, as well as one of the oldest in Europe – in Central Europe only Prague’s Charles University predates it. Its story begins in 1364: following years of pleading, King Kazimierz finally persuaded the groovily titled Pope Urban V to grant permission to establish a seat of higher learning. Three years later the school bell was ringing in the lessons, namely philosophy, law and medicine. Originally named the Studium Generale the university started to flourish the following century when maths and astrology were introduced. Renamed Jagiellonian in 1817 the university survived the partitioning of Poland and continued to prosper; in 1883 professors Olszewski and Wróblewski became the first to liquefy oxygen and nitrogen from air, while the brainbox Cybulski got to the bottom of what adrenalin was all about. The Nazi invasion, however, heralded the end of Jagiellonian’s golden age. On November 6, 1939 the Germans lured over 100 professors and lecturers to the campus, before arresting and imprisoning them – many were to die in the death camps. Following the war the college played its part in the anti-totalitarian protests of the 60s and 80s, and nowadays the university has recovered well from the hardships of the last century. Attended by over 44,000 students you’ll find the bulk of the university's buildings occupying the south west of the Old Town. To learn more about it don’t miss a visit to the University Museum at Collegium Maius.
But what’s a university without its students, and Krakow’s job dodgers deserve more attention than most. Of the alumni none have achieved more than Nicolaus Copernicus, a product of the class of 1492. Lauded as the founder of modern astronomy, it was he who asserted the earth orbited the sun. Fortunately for him it took the church over 100 years to decide agreeing with him merited being burnt at a stake. Other students of note include Jan Matejko, who would go on to paint one of Poland’s most revered works of art: ‘The Battle of Grunwald’. Karol Wojtyla, better known as Pope John Paul II studied in the philology department, as did the Nobel Laureates Wislawa Szymborska and Ivo Andrie. Not that all students proved so diligent; Stanisław Lem, who would go on to pen the classic 'Solaris', also studied at Jagiellonian, but hated his medical studies so much he flunked his exams on purpose. From its beginning the Jagiellonian university’s students proved a bit of a handful – exempt from local justice and answerable only to the rector they frequently ran wild, the Hungarian students particularly prone to launching pogroms on the town's Jewish population. And if they sound bad then they’re not a patch on Faust and Twardowski, two weird sorcerers who allegedly studied at Jagiellonian, before gaining notoriety having entered pacts with the devil. It’s not hard, however, to feel sorry for Nawojka, the first female student to attend the uni. Some 300 years before women were officially admitted she managed to bypass discrimination by dressing as a lad.