Ghetto Heroes Square

Ghetto Heroes Square (Plac Bohaterów Getta) is a town square in Kraków’s Podgórze district. Between 1941 and 1943 it was part of the enclosed Kraków Ghetto created by the German occupation authorities. The square served as a central point for ghetto administration and control and is widely documented as a site where Jewish residents were gathered during actions connected to deportations and the ghetto’s liquidation.

The best-known contemporary feature is the Memorial of Chairs, installed after a major redevelopment of the square in the mid-2000s. The memorial consists of 70 large metal chairs placed across the open space. The design references accounts of furniture being carried out into the square during the clearing of apartments after deportations, and it functions as a visual marker of absence and forced removal rather than a figurative monument.

Several historically significant buildings face the square, including the former Eagle Pharmacy (Apteka “Pod Orłem”) at number 18, operated by Tadeusz Pankiewicz during the ghetto period. Today the square is both an everyday public space and a formal place of remembrance, with its wartime role and memorialisation central to the site’s identity.