Changes

Among many tourist attractions in my beautiful hometown of Cracow (or Kraków, if you will), the former seat of the kings of Poland, there are two venerable establishments which pride themselves on dating back to the reign of King Casimir the Great -- specifically, to the year 1364. One of them is Poland's oldest institution of higher learning, the one where Copernicus went to college. King Casimir obtained papal consent to open a university in Cracow in 1364 indeed. But it took him three more years to actually open the Academy of Cracow, and three years after that King Casimir died and the Academy closed for business. It was only in 1400 that King Vladislav Jagailo and Queen Hewdig Hedwig founded a new university in Cracow, which is known to this day as Jagiellonian University (and not Casimirian University). "Founded in 1364" turns out to be somewhat of a stretch.

As a child, I too was convinced that this restaurant -- back then passing for the best in town, if not in all Poland (largely due to the lack of competition) -- had been founded in 1364 by Mikołaj Wierzynek (pronounced ''mee-{{small|KAW}}-wye vyeh-{{small|ZHIH}}-neck''), who must have been, therefore, Poland's first restaurateur. My first doubts appeared when I read that restaurants in general are a 19th-century invention and that medieval monarchs avoided dining in taverns or inns, unless they had absolutely no choice. And together with doubts came questions: What was this banquet in Cracow about? Who took part in it and why? What kind of food was served? Who was this Wierzynek and what role did he serve play in the banquet? And when was the restaurant bearing his name and located at on Europe's largest city square really opened?