When tackling a subject as large as a city in LEGO, it’s best to bring things down to microscale. While you’re not able to capture every inhabitant, many of the metropolitan details can be preserved with clever part choices. That’s exactly what builder Toltomeja has done with the city of Kraków. Let’s take a tour of their tiny city, and explore all the sights within.
We see the main square of Kraków above, centered on Cloth Hall. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, this central feature of the city dates back to the Renaissance. Brilliantly captured here using vertical grille tiles to represent its many arches, the structure really stands out in the middle of the paved square. From a different angle below, we can see St. Mary’s Basilica, clad in brown and black. Its Gothic towers, sitting at uneven heights at the front of the church, are capped here with a 1×1 cone and the base of a lever. And along it’s sides, transparent plates mirror the Basilica’s tall windows.
Next, we jump over to Wawel Castle. Built along the Vistula River, this massive fortification features a cathedral, chapel, and even a dragon’s lair. Okay, so maybe the Wawel Dragon is just a myth, but the metal statue commemorating it does breathe fire. Toltomeja represents that here with a black bar with clip holding a candle flame.
On the last stop of our quick tour, we’ll land in Szczepański Square, home of the Palace of Art. Founded on May 11, 1901, the Palace is the city’s first example of Art Nouveau architecture. While the building’s more subtle details and sculptures are lost at this scale, we can readily make out the water feature in front of the structure, utilizing cheese slopes laid sideways flush with tiles. This view also allows us to appreciate the simple-yet-effective method employed for vegetation at the miniscule scale.
I know we didn’t hit all the stops on this whirlwind tour of Kraków. But if you’d like to see more (a lot more), make sure to head to Toltomeja’s Flickr page for even more highlights like the Church of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Florian’s Gate.
Such complexity moves architecture series to another level. I would but this model. Microscale city centers can be very interesting. Maybe we see another project in a future? Florence in Italy is a nice topic to touch.