It’s up to us what it will be like. Everyone is at home here.
Marek Mikos
The name “Wesoła” [“Jolly” – trans.] was bestowed on the area by Katarzyna Zamoyska née Ostrogska – 17th-century magnate and owner of around three hundred villages including this particular idyllic settlement right on Kraków’s doorstep yet outside of its jurisdiction. In the 18th century, next to the former merchants’ “Russian tract” (present-day Kopernika Street), the location was home to numerous hospitals which covered an expansive area between Grzegórzecka, Kopernika, Powstańców Warszawy and Westerplatte streets until just a few years ago. In 2019, the hospitals and clinics started moving away from Wesoła. There were myriad ideas on how best to use the space, and eventually the Mayor of the City of Kraków acquired the historic hospital buildings and spaces from the Jagiellonian University on behalf of the residents.
At a meeting attended by Jerzy Muzyk, Deputy Mayor of Kraków for spatial management and green policies, someone made an off-hand remark, “How about if the city buys Wesoła?” The idea immediately appealed to him, and Mayor Jacek Majchrowski also quickly became a fan. “The results of public consultations were exactly as I expected. Kraków’s residents made it clearly that this should be a space for everyone, and that it should develop according to the needs of various individuals and social groups,” stresses Muzyk.
The founders dream of a place where all Cracovians and visitors to the city find something for themselves: from alternative culture and family picnics, via boules and footbag games, to food truck lunches and restaurant dinners.
Nine hectares of imagination
There are plenty of ways in from Kopernika Street – the hospital grounds could once have been entered via numerous gates, steps, avenues and inner alleyways. I come in via the gate near the corner of Blich Street and follow a wide road. I walk past a stubborn dachshund whose owner knows all too well who’s in charge, and follows the dog’s suggestion to take a different route.
Dogs and their humans are very important in Wesoła. They have taken a particular liking to a large, grassy meadow near the old monastery and next to the former pharmacy. “There are always a lot of us around six in the evenings,” says a man taking out two pitbulls for a short walk before work. I head into Wesoła.
My gaze is drawn to benches on a lawn beneath ancient trees. An elderly man sits on one and carefully reads a piece of paper. It could be results of hospital tests – haematology and oncology departments are still operational.
A few steps away, I can hear music resounding from the former monastery owned by the hospital until recently. Am I imagining things? I come closer… No, it’s real. The Capella Cracoviensis early music ensemble is using the building as a temporary rehearsal space. They are practising before heading on tour to Germany. In August, the Spółdzielnia Muzyczna Contemporary Ensemble also took up residence at the former monastery. The group is perhaps best known to Kraków’s audiences for their performances at the Sacrum Profanum, Audio Art and Unsound festivals.
Wesoła is a living organism. Some organisations have been here a long time but are moving out, others are here temporarily, others still are planning on settling in. The latter include the Kraków Library. Although the enormous institution has dozens of branches in all corners of the city, it is yet to have a main site – a dream space for the written and spoken word. “Finally we are going to have something Kraków has been waiting for for over a century, and something other ‘Krakóws’ of Europe already have: a suitably large, spacious library,” says Agnieszka Staniszewska-Mól, director of the Kraków Library which has recently been awarded numerous prestigious prizes. “A place for everyone, open from early morning until late evening – somewhere to work at a desk with a book or laptop, or on comfy sofas, couches and pouffes. With good coffee, good energy and a good atmosphere. Spending time among books surrounded by beautiful design – time which will be filled with calm. It will be a brand-new ‘cultural clinic’ using literature to soothe the rather hectic and lost contemporary world,” she adds with infectious conviction.
Metamorphoses
Once Capella Cracoviensis and Spółdzielnia Muzyczna move to the Centre of Music, currently under construction by Błonia Meadows, their music won’t be replaced by silence. The Church of Immaculate Conception next to the former monastery will regularly host concerts. The acoustics of the historic building is perfect for music, frequently penned especially to be performed in churches. “We hosted open rehearsals in May,” says Teresa Bałos, deputy director of Capella Cracoviensis. “Now everyone can come along. People pop in, ask if they can listen, and Jan Tomasz Adamus [the ensemble’s music director – trans.] and the rest of us welcome all visitors.”
Teresa Bałos has an office in the former administration office of the dermatology department. Even now people occasionally turn up with documents and insist they’ve made no mistake: “But the office has always been here.” And it’s not an isolated case – similar misunderstandings happen at the former diagnostics department, now occupied by Krakow Festival Office (KBF), and patients continue to bring prescriptions to the former pharmacy even though it is now the Pharmacy of Design.
I take the worn staircase from the first floor of the former monastery towards the exit. It was once the regular route of Nurse Rozalia Celakówna; she spent twenty years working on the skin and venereal ward and passed away in 1944 as a servant of God. The Pharmacy, surrounded by greenery, stands opposite.
Prescription for creativity
The Pharmacy of Design is hardly a random name. The postmodernist building was home to the hospital’s pharmacy for many years, serving as a considerable “factory of drugs” made for nearby hospitals. It’s August when I’m here. I can hear angle grinders, hammers and lively conversation: renovation work is ongoing ahead of the grand opening planned for 26 September. The interiors preserve fragments of the recent future: a short wall with a tap in the middle of the space, a tiled recess once used to store medicines made on site, and a row of working sinks under the window. The state-of-the-art conference room is already up and running.
Carolina Pietyra, originator of the Pharmacy of Design and director of KBF, has a glint in her eyes as she shows visitors around the renovated space as she imagines it filled with creative ideas and people. It will be a true republic of designers. “They won’t be planning other people’s activities, because everyone has the right to express themselves and make a little corner of Wesoła their own. Based on experiences of other creative districts – and many have sprung up over the last three decades – they will represent Wesoła’s own vision of development. I’m certain that designs appreciated by their users will be put into use. It’s up to us what Wesoła will be like. Everyone is at home here,” she adds.
Carolina is very familiar with practices of creative districts in Marseilles, Nantes, Shanghai and many other cities. “Marseilles is an excellent example of the benefits of residents building their own meeting space. The city’s creative district has been growing over the course of thirty years; it continues to develop, and it is a space for creativity and meetings with artists – somewhere with something for everyone,” she says. Nantes is another interesting example. On one side of the river, a creative cultural district arose spontaneously, while on the other everything was coordinated by the local authority. The former is home to far more authentic artistic activities. Carolina suggests I read a book by Basile Michel, a French expert on creative districts. She has commissioned a Polish translation of the dissertation, which is due to be published soon. The author reveals the vast potential of creative spaces and warns operators against interfering, explaining that it may suppress passion for spontaneous, organic activities or shift them elsewhere.
Urban tandem
“Jacek Majchrowski has entrusted the discreet overseeing of Wesoła’s development to the tandem of the Kraków Development Agency and KBF. The Agency is responsible for managing real estate according to the residents’ wishes, while KBF initiates and coordinates all cultural, academic and creative activities. The city has handed over management of real estate in Wesoła to the Agency, of which the city is the only shareholder,” stresses Muzyk.
Of course KBF’s director and her team aren’t forgetting about the past which built the district’s identity and its genius loci. The former hospital has left an indelible mark on collective memory and imagination. In any case, it would be impossible to eliminate the recollections of so many years of Kraków’s clinics, the pride and joy of professors of the Theatrum Anatomicum which taught anatomy to generations of physicians and the helipad on the hospital roof. But we mustn’t forget about the present day, either, which may well give this place a stimulus for growth. After all, the area has been home to people for centuries – first in a mediaeval settlement, and later in the local jurisdiction.
Katarzyna’s jurisdiction
Katarzyna Zamoyska was the wife of Tomasz who, as a young man, was taught by Szymon Szymonowic, an acclaimed author of pastorals. Szymonowic was heavily inspired by Jan Kochanowski, Poland’s greatest Renaissance poet and author of Saint John’s Eve Song About Saturday Festive Night. Szymonowic’s pupil was almost certainly familiar with the words uttered by the Twelfth Maiden, “Peaceful village, joyful village”. After her husband’s death, Zamoyska’s management of her extensive estate breathed new life also into the tract of land right outside of Kraków – was she inspired by those words? Perhaps the idyllic vision painted by Kochanowski was Katarzyna’s dream goal.
Under her rule, Wesoła became a self-sufficient settlement with thriving agriculture and craft industry supplying nearby Kraków. Blich Street, mentioned at the start of our little sojourn around Wesoła, is a reminder of a site for bleaching linen fabrics by the long-filled river which once flowed here.
Katarzyna Olesiak, director of the Department of Culture and National Heritage at the Kraków Municipal Office, says, “Wesoła has a great, unique significance for the city authorities and my department in particular. It has given Kraków something other cities can envy: a space which is at once modern and developed with respect for its past. It is Wesoła’s cultural and creative programme which makes the district so welcoming to its residents.”
Facilitatrice
While no-one today would wish to live surrounded by the stench of cowsheds, pigsties and sewers, the idyllic image of old independent Wesoła with its greenery and bustle is attractive. We do want to live in harmony with nature, among lush vegetation and surrounded by creative people. The first step towards this goal is the opening of allotments for residents wishing to grown herbs and vegetables, planned by KBF for next year. KBF’s staff are already growing their own flowers and herbs at the Pharmacy of Design – the latter an essential ingredient at any apothecary.
Participation is a favourite term of Carolina Pietyra who has been entrusted with coordinating cultural activities in Wesoła. When I ask her what job she’d have picked at the former hospital, she answers, “I don’t really know all these clinical professions. A surgeon perhaps? Anaesthetist? Maybe… Sometimes a director, but more likely a cleaner – there’s so much to do! And a midwife. I do all these things to the best of my ability in Wesoła.” She adds that her preferred title would be what the French call facilitateur or facilitatrice, the facilitator. “This ensures the smooth running of all activities and processes, and since it reaches for the latest methodologies, it also involves modelling and coordinating discovering and implementing solutions,” she explains.
When asked whether KBF’s activities will now be limited to Wesoła, she answers, “Wesoła has no boundaries, but let’s not forget that it is just one of KBF’s spheres of activity. As the name and very idea of KBF reveals, our most important goal is organising major festivals and cultural events. I will be delighted when some of them find a home in Wesoła.”
Muzyk adds, “I’m already hearing that in the long term, the city acquiring these nine hectares for its residents will be regarded as the best decision of Jacek Majchrowski’s mayorship.”
I finish my wander around Wesoła with a rest at the terrace of the Pharmacy of Design. I can hear birds performing and an orchestra rehearsing. They do not interfere with each other, on the contrary, they sound great together.
Text published in the "Kraków Culture" 3/2023 quarterly.
