If you are looking to escape the daily grind of working life, a break in a city renowned for its salt mine, a ghetto and a concentration camp might seem an odd choice. Krakow, Poland's ancient capital and seat of its kings, has all of these, but offers far more than a reminder of the darker episodes in Europe's history.
The first thing that strikes you about the place is the music. From dawn to. . .well, dawn, the city has a constant soundtrack. From the folksy accordions and fiddles of buskers on the narrow medieval streets, to the drum-and-bass rumbling from the city's cellars after midnight, it is never silent. Add the annual jazz festival, and there's an awful lot of melody in a city as beautiful as it is ancient.
History casts a long shadow here. In the course of a thousand years, the Poles have resisted invading Mongol and Tartar armies, been overwhelmed by Austria and then Nazi Germany, and subjugated as a satellite state of the USSR, before emerging late this century to cope with the demands of the post-communist age. Krakow, the cultural and former political centre of the nation, has survived it all unscathed.
At the city's heart is Stare Miasto (the Old Town), an island of monuments and architectural jewels ringed by the Planty, a moat of gardens dividing the old from the much older. Wander through the exquisite streets and squares, and it becomes clear why UNESCO classifies Krakow as one of 12 World Heritage sites.
The centre of the Old Town - and the best place to see the buskers coming and take appropriate evasive action - is Rynek Glowny, the central square. Several acres of flagstone surrounded by grand townhouses, with the magnificent baroque Cloth Hall at its centre. Rynek Glowny was the largest square in medieval Europe, and it is still dominated by the twin spires of the imposing Mariacki Church, founded in 1222.
Legend has it that the church was the work of twin brothers, who designed a tower each to symbolise their partnership. However, all did not run smoothly between the pair, with each wanting to build a taller spire than the other. Eventually, brother one cracked and killed his twin (size clearly was important in this family). Overcome by remorse, he then hurled himself from his tower. To commemorate the loss of the architects, the steeples were left at uneven heights.
Krakow is full of stories like this, but the best (and I have it on good authority that it's true) also involves the Mariacki. During the Tartar raids of the 13th century, a watchman posted in the church spied invading hordes outside the city walls and reached for his trumpet to raise the alarm. His warning was stilled midway by an arrow to the throat from a Tartar archer but, thanks to the trumpeter's actions, the city was saved.
His bravery is commemorated daily: every hour, on the hour, a trumpeter plays a sombre tune, the hejnal, halting at the point at which his ancient predecessor was said to have been killed. Two members of the city's fire service share the duties these days and, while the tune is drowned out during the day, it is a poignant piece at night.
As well as the 130-odd churches - twothirds of Poles are practising Catholics and there seems to be room for them all in Krakow - the city is rightly proud of its ancient university, which dominates the western quarter of the Old Town.
Almost uniquely among Polish institutions, the university received no money from the church, relying instead on the patronage of the royal family. But it made its staff live like monks anyway. Academics were expected to devote their lives to their science, eschewing marriage and the pleasures of the flesh. It obviously brought the best out of them: the university counts Copernicus, Marie Curie and Pope John-Paul II among its old boys and girls.
Of course, Krakow is remembered for none of these. Nowadays the most famous former resident - thanks to Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List - is Oskar Schindler, the most famous attraction (if that word can be used) is the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
THERE is little sign of the Jewish ghetto established by the Nazis in 1941 and "dissolved" two years later, aside from a portion of the high wall that kept people in. Better preserved is the original Jewish quarter of Kazimierz, from which the Jews were removed. It bears the weight of the past with dignity - the 65,000 people from this tiny district who perished at Auschwitz had the shortest journey of any of those who died there - and the streets have the peaceful air of pilgrimage about them.
The trip to Auschwitz is unforgettable. A two-carriage train takes 90 minutes to reach the nondescript town of Oswiecim - Auschwitz in German - and the camp is a further 15 minutes on foot. Chillingly preserved, the double rows of barbed wire and look-out huts are exactly as they were when the camp was liberated in 1945. The legend "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Makes Free) remains above the main gate, as do the now-faded signs inside the fence, illustrated with a skull and crossbones and bearing one word: "Halt!"
The barrack huts that once slept six-to-a-bunk in unspeakable conditions now house exhibits illustrating the horrors performed here. One, a glass case 60 ft (18 metres) long holds human hair cut from the heads of the dead for cloth; another shows artificial limbs removed before bodies were incinerated.
It is the insane internal logic that must have operated here that is hardest to fathom. There is a prison block where "criminals" were punished, yet the entire camp existed to punish people merely for the accident of birth that labelled them Jew or Pole or Gypsy. Next to the punishment block is a courtyard and at the far end of that the "Wall of Death". More than 20,000 people were shot in the back of the head against a wall that is barely 30 ft (nine metres) long.
It is said that the scale of the slaughter only becomes clear at Auschwitz II Birkenau, the larger sister-camp two miles to the south that at its peak "processed" 60,000 souls a day. I didn't visit. After five hours at Auschwitz, I couldn't take any more.