Guarding history. Krakow Town Archives of Former Records 1887–1952 - Treasures

„From yellowed volumes… conjuring the past of the royal town…”

The most important task of the Krakow Town Archives of Former Records was to gather the vast clerical heritage of the town that was spread across numerous municipal and governmental institutions. Therefore, the action of merging the collections of records books and documents of Krakow, Kazimierz, Kleparz and the suburbs from the 14th to the 19th century was carried out. Next, the records of the Town Hall from 1796–1816, as well as the archival materials from the Archives of the Free Town of Krakow, were added. The records of the town of Podgórze, the 19th-century records of the Krakow Town Hall and the court archives were also acquired with time. The records of societies, brotherhoods, guilds and private collections, such as the collections of Edmund Diehl and Ambroży Grabowski, were also deposited. In 1923, the records of the Supreme National Committee were added to the resources. Mainly due to donations, it was also possible to organise an extensive library, with a separate section concerning the Polish Legions. The Krakow municipal archives possessed constantly increasing collections of maps and town plans. It also collected the census records of Krakow from the years 1850–1921, as well as school and hospital records. In 1951, the collections of the Archives amounted to almost 1400 metres of records and over 18 thousand archival units.