Old Market Square and Town Hall — Municipal Power Takes the Stage
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
The Old Market Square represents a different Poznań from Cathedral Island: a chartered medieval town organized around commerce and municipal government. The Renaissance town hall gives civic authority an elaborate façade, while the square’s plots reveal the economics of frontage, trade and density. The famous mechanical goats in the town-hall clock are a later attraction, and local stories about their origin should be treated as legend rather than administrative history. What matters historically is the shift in political geography. Bishops and rulers dominated the island; merchants and councillors made the market square another centre of power. Medieval Poznań was already a city with competing institutions.