While Kraków’s regal associations are common knowledge, it’s easy to remain ignorant of its connections with communism, and specifically Comrade Lenin who for two years called the city home.

Lenin arrived in Kraków on June 22, 1912 on the overnight train from Vienna, wife and mother-in-law in tow. Working as a freelance journalist for Russian papers like Pravda he took rented lodgings first on Krolowej Jadwigi, behind the Salwator tram terminus, and then on ul. Lubomirskiego 47. His favoured hangout was Noworolski café (Rynek Główny 1), a spot he used to entertain both wife and lover, and letters to his mother also reveal him attending concerts at what is now the Graffiti Centre on ul. Św. Jana. One of Lenin’s great passions was ice skating, and he’d often be seen spinning deft moves on an ice rink which once stood close to the Botanical Gardens. In warmer months he’d pass time cycling in the Wolski Forest as well as taking romantic walks through Błonie Meadows.

Summers were spent in Poronin, just outside Zakopane, where he would play chess and hang out with Polish heavyweight writers like Witkiewicz and Żeromski. His reputation as a good-for-nothing finally caught up with him however, and on August 8th, 1914 he was arrested as an enemy of the state and imprisoned in Nowy Targ. Released days later he returned to Kraków to pack his bags and fled to Switzerland. Within years the show-off ice skater would become one of the most famous names in world history.