Crowds awaiting the Trumpeter at St. Mary's

Each hour a trumpet call, the hejnal mariacki, is played from the taller of the two towers of St. Mary's church. Many years ago Poland was attacked by the barbarian Tartar armies of Ghengis Khan and as they approached the city the only person to see them was the trumpeter in the tower. To warn the people of Cracow he started playing his fanfare over and over again until he was fatally shot in the neck by a Tartar archer. To this day, in honour of the trumpeter, each time the fanfare is played it stops abruptly at the point where he was killed.