Kraków’s Christmas market ranked as best in Europe

Kraków’s Christmas market (pictured above) has been named as Europe’s best in a new ranking. Two other Polish cities, Wrocław and Poznań, also appeared in the top ten, making Poland the only country to feature three times.

Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, was close behind Kraków in second place while Budapest in Hungary came third, ahead of Austria’s capital, Vienna.

The ranking was compiled by Christmas Tree World, the UK’s largest seller of Christmas trees, based on criteria including how popular cities’ markets were on social media platforms Instagram and TikTok, how often they were searched for on Google, and how affordable local accommodation is.

Karków Christmas market, with its 4.3 million views on TikTok, received the highest total score of 7.84 out of 10. Wrocław (7.09) and Poznań (6.92) were fifth and sixth respectively.

“Kraków’s market is one of the most picture-perfect settings for a Christmas market that you can imagine,” wrote Christmas Tree World. The market, which starts on 24 November and lasts 33 days, is located on the medieval market square in Kraków’s UNESCO-listed old town.

“As Poland is a country of meat lovers, Krakow’s market offers some of the best meat quality around, with seasoned grilled sausages sourced from local farms, as well as hearty and warm soups to keep you warm in Poland’s chilly conditions,” added the report.

It also found Kraków to be among the cheapest cities to stay in, according to average prices for three- and four-star hotels from online travel agency Booking.com. Poznań and Wrocław had even lower figures.

Kraków is Poland’s most popular tourist destination, drawing 14 million visitors in 2019, the last year before the pandemic. In that year, it was chosen by British consumer association Which? as Europe’s best city break destination for the third year in a row.

That record number of visitors looks likely to be surpassed this year. By the end of July, Kraków’s airport had served 5.3 million passengers this year, the most in its history, reports the Rzeczpospolita daily. In July itself, it had almost 919,000 passengers, which was 17% more than in the same month of 2019.

As well as the annual Christmas market, Kraków is also famed for its annual displays of homemade models of nativity scenes, a UNESCO-listed tradition known as szopki bożonarodzeniowa in Polish.

Reuters looks at Kraków’s annual Christmas tradition of displaying „szopki”, homemade (but often very elaborate) models of nativity scenes pic.twitter.com/uxx2h3QFTO

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Main image credit: Bogusław Świerzowski / kraków.pl

 

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.