About This Location
Badylak’s Well is easy to walk past - it looks like a small hydrant on a low stone ring in the Main Market Square. But it marks one of the most powerful protest acts in Kraków’s modern history. On March 21, 1980, Walenty Badylak, a former Home Army (Armia Krajowa) soldier, chained himself to this spot in the western part of the square and set himself on fire. It was a protest against the communist-era silence and lies around the Katyn massacre, and against broader repression and distortion of public life. The memorial form seen today was added later. A commemorative plaque was installed in 1990, unveiled by his grandson, Father Wojciech Badylak, turning an ordinary piece of street furniture into a permanent place of memory.