Streets that changed their names (and what the names reveal)
Sample excerpt: how political eras reshape a city’s toponymy (place naming) and public memory.
Read more →
Curated history
from photographs, archives, and lived memory
Walk through Kraków
as it looked 100–150 years ago.
A personal research blog devoted to Kraków (Krakau, Cracow) in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century: streetscapes, everyday life, and the small details that define a city’s soul.
⟡ Annotated photographs
⟡ Micro-essays and longer studies
⟡ Guided thematic walks
⟡ Sources and citations per post
Three ways to explore
Choose a reading mode: quick visual browsing, guided chronology, or curated essays.
1) Photo-first browsing
Open a photograph, read a short annotation, then follow links to the related story and location.
2) Chronological timeline
Slide through key years to discover city changes, historical turning points, and thematic clusters.
3) Curated essays
Dive into longer studies: urban development, social life, institutions, and everyday material culture.
Interactive timeline
Drag the slider to reveal a year’s highlight. Replace these samples with your mother’s real milestones and posts.
Year: 1890
Range: 1870–1925
A city of trams and transitions
Sample text: introduce one shift in daily life (transport, housing, commerce) and link to a deep post.
How this helps first-time visitors
In applied linguistics terms, this is a “navigation scaffold” (a structured path that reduces cognitive load). Visitors immediately grasp: time range, themes, and what kind of evidence supports the writing.
Recommended first reading order
Timeline → one photo essay → one street-based post → one long essay (book-like chapter).
Optional multilingual layer
If you want: short bilingual captions (English plus Polish, or English plus German) for key pages. Keep posts monolingual at first; add translations later to avoid workflow overload.
Featured posts
Replace these with real WordPress post links. Keep the summaries short and specific: one claim, one place, one time window.
A market morning near the Old Town: objects, sounds, routines
Sample excerpt: a “thick description” (dense, concrete detail) approach to reconstruct daily life.
Read more →Photographs as evidence: what the camera frames, and what it hides
Sample excerpt: how to read images critically, using captions, provenance, and corroborating documents.
Read more →Photo archive (preview)
Click any thumbnail to open a lightbox. Replace the image sources with your own files (for example: /wp-content/uploads/...).
Tip: keep each photograph caption structured: where · approximate year · source · what to notice.
The book
A landing page should sell credibility: the book is a strong authority signal. Add a cover image, reviews, and a short excerpt.
[Book title here]
Kraków / Krakau / Cracow · 1870–1925
What to add: publisher, year, edition, and where to buy or borrow.
A compact, readable entry point
Sample text: this blog extends the research behind the book with additional photographs, corrections, and thematic essays. Treat the blog as a living appendix: updates, new sources, and reader questions.
Excerpt
Add a short passage (two to four sentences) that shows style and tone.
Press
Add one quote from a review or a local history institution.
Sources
List archives, libraries, and collections used.
Newsletter and contact
Keep communication simple: one email field, one promise. Add a real handler later (WordPress plugin or server endpoint).
Receive new posts and archive notes
One or two emails per month: new essays, newly identified photographs, and corrections or additions to earlier posts.
Privacy note: add a short policy line here once you connect a real mailing system (for example: MailPoet plugin in WordPress).