KRAKOW — Fed up with the “drunken rabble” filling the streets with shouting, fighting and vomiting every night, residents of Krakow have filed a lawsuit against Poland’s second-largest city and former capital, citing the detrimental impact of noise on locals.
Ryszard Rydiger, a Krakow-based lawyer who lives near Szewska Street, filed the suit on behalf of a group of several dozen Krakow residents. For years, these residents have had to deal with the hordes of drunk tourists — whom they’ve dubbed the “international tourist lumpenproletariat” — who pass under their windows almost every night. And the residents argue that this situation would not be tolerated in any other city in the world.
In Old Town, Krakow’s historic central district (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), dozens of pubs and coffee shops line Szewska Street and many say goodbye to their last guests in the early morning hours. Among them is a fast-food restaurant, open until 4 a.m., that is frequented every night by hungry, drunken partygoers.
“Every day of the week, from the evening hours until 6 a.m., Szewska Street turns into a place of noisy gatherings. The crowd, without any restrictions or effective response from the city authorities, sings to the music coming from the premises, screams, fights and vomits. The drunken noise exceeds the standards permitted by law,” Rydiger argues in the lawsuit he submitted to Krakow’s District Court.
Nightclub next door
But Rydiger stresses that the problem extends beyond Szewska Street, to all streets leading to the Main Square. And he suggests that the court call residents of other central avenues and squares as witnesses. He also hopes the court will appoint an acoustics expert in order to prove that noise standards are constantly exceeded there at night.
It’s difficult to have family dinners, to sleep at night, to read a book, listen to music or watch TV.
The disgruntled Krakow residents are asking for 500 PLN (about 115 euro) for every violation of noise standards provided for by the law.
“It’s difficult to walk through the street amid a drunken, screaming crowd singing at full volume,” residents say. “It’s difficult to have family dinners, to sleep at night, to read a book, listen to music or watch TV.”
“There is a nightclub behind our bedroom wall. Once I asked the owner to soundproof the walls, but he replied that he came here to make money, not to invest,” Rydiger said. “A few days ago I couldn’t sleep all night because of the noise. I asked the police and the city guard to intervene. The city guard arrived and said that they could not do anything. The police didn’t come until 4 a.m., when the situation had already calmed down a bit.”
Blood and vomit stains
Mariusz Kogut, who lives on Saint Thomas Street, has observed changes in the city center for over the past 30 years. “In recent years, we’ve been dealing with mass alcohol tourism, and the area around the Market Square has turned into a cheap beer and vodka bottling plant.”
“How do we deal with this? In the evening, we close our doors and windows and try to somehow make it through the night,” Kogut says, adding that “in the morning we look for a way to school, so that our kids do not have to witness the remnants of nightly drinking: blood or vomit stains, or survivors lying somewhere in the street with their pants down and rolling in feces.”
Kogut is angry at city leadership for treating Krakow like a piggy bank and not caring about the inheritance entrusted to them.
“I’ve been to many countries, including Puerto Rico, where there is a very big problem with drunkenness and crime, but the very center of the capital, San Juan, is a real postcard; There isn’t a horde of drunk tourists because the police keep order. And the city leadership ensures that the old town is only visited by tourists who can appreciate its beauty,” Kogut said, “in our city it’s the exact opposite.”
Krakowians move away
Ewa Horowska, who has lived near Sienna Street since she was born, said that she is slowly beginning to feel like an intruder in her own home. As the city has been taken over by crowds of partiers, Krakowians are moving away from the city center. Horowska estimates that around the main square, only about 400 of them are left.
“In our building only myself and my husband stayed. All of the other apartments are being rented out to tourists,” she says, “My son and his wife and kids couldn’t stand it and also moved out.”
“I’d gladly move, but I cannot afford to change apartments.”
While moving away from the city center has become the most common way to escape the noise, it isn’t possible for everyone. “Once the City Guard told me that I don’t have to live here, that I can move out. Believe me, I’d gladly move, but I cannot afford to change apartments,” Horowska said.
In the evening, Horowska’s street turns into an open-air restaurant. While there are not many pubs in the direct vicinity, people returning from the main square or making their way to the trendy Kazimierz neighborhood stop on Sienna Street for a quick snack and sit, food in hand, on the sidewalk.
“And in the morning after such a ball, there are food scraps and empty alcohol bottles everywhere,” Horowska said. In addition to litter, another problem residents cite is the lack of available public toilets, meaning that drunk people often urinate in Planty Park or on the walls of landmark buildings.
Studying solutions
Krakow City Guard spokesman Marek Aniol said that from February 2023 to the end of November 2023, guards intervened in the very center of the city almost 6,800 times — responding to more than 20 calls a day — and that the reasons were mainly disturbing peace and public order, including drinking alcohol and destroying property. More than 4,500 interventions resulted in fines.
Residents of central Krakow have called for city guards to be equipped with noise-measuring devices, and for the appointment of a night mayor to maintain order in the city center.
Krakow Mayor Aleksander Miszalski, who said during his campaign that he would appoint a night mayor, told Gazeta Wyborcza in an interview that he sees the problem of the city’s “alcoholization” and has commissioned an analysis of night mayor programs in other European cities to determine and implement the best solutions in Krakow.
Residents from the Main Square area are set to meet with Krakow city councilors on June 20. “We want to show them that we are still here and to bring attention to needed changes in city law,” Rydiger said.
New measures
While parties can last all night in Krakow’s Main Square, the situation is slightly different in the trendy Kazimierz neighborhood, south of Old Town. During public consultations, Kazimierz residents, who cite noise as the main reason for moving out of the historic center, called for limitations on the nighttime activities of nearby pubs and restaurants.
Since August 2022, Kazimierz’s outdoor bars and cafes have been required to close at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, and at 10 p.m. all other nights.
From July 2023, there have been nighttime bans on alcohol sales throughout Krakow, which police and city guard say have lowered interventions by up to 47%, as well as leading to a lower number of people being sent to the drunk tank. The ban, however, applies only to convenience stores and gas stations from midnight to 5:30 in the morning; it does not affect bars and restaurants, where patrons can drink with abandon for the whole night.
