Stop drinking with statue, say Kraków officials

Councillors in Kraków have called on the mayor to put up a sign reminding people that they are legally not allowed to drink at a table that is part of a statue of a famous Polish director located outside his regular bar on the city’s main square.

The monument to Piotr Skrzynecki was installed in 2000 outside Vis-à-vis, an iconic bar that is close to a famous underground cabaret, Piwnica pod Baranami, that was founded by Skrzynecki in 1956.

Vis-à-vis, which was itself founded in 1978, functioned as an unofficial office for the cabaret and the monument to Skrzynecki, who died in 1997, shows him sitting at a table in his favourite corner of the bar’s garden.

However, the place where it is located is now a public thoroughfare, not part of the bar’s garden, meaning that consuming alcohol there is not permitted. Under Polish law, consuming alcohol in public spaces such as streets, squares and parks is prohibited and penalised with a 100 zloty (€23) fine.

However, given that Skrzynecki’s statue includes a table (complete with coffee cup and ashtray) it is common to see clients of Vis-à-vis sitting there and having a drink.

Now, councillors representing the Old Town district in which the statue is located have submitted a resolution calling on the mayor, Aleksander Miszalski to take action, reports local newspaper Gazeta Krakowska.

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“It is a monument,” said Jan Hoffman, chairman of the Old Town district council. “You can sit there, take a picture, but it is a public place where you cannot drink alcohol, because it is subject to a penalty.”

In their resolution, he and his colleagues note that “tourists who visit Kraków, especially those coming from abroad, may not be aware that by consuming alcohol in the place in question, they expose themselves to…a fine”.

“Therefore, a manifestation of goodwill towards them will be to display appropriate information, preferably in Polish and English,” informing them, write the councillors. Hoffman suggested that, alternatively, Vis-à-vis’s garden could be extended to include the statue.

Main image credit: GRAZYNA MAKARA / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.