Despite its prime location lined with beautiful town houses, it wasn’t that long ago that this historical square was an eye-offending car park flanked with taxis and flowerless concrete flowerbeds. After nearly two years work in 2009-2010 and 13zł million spent, Plac Szczepański now presents quite a different face to visitors, with benches, plants, and a large multi-media fountain with many jet streams, some of which spring straight out of the ground in front of the main pool. Despite critical grumblings from the city’s conservative architectural and historical community, residents love the fountain, with kids and dogs happily splashing through its waters in the summer. The fountain, which is illuminated by coloured lights in the evening, has quickly become the most popular place to cool off in the city centre during the warmer part of the year, though you'll find it inoperative in winter.Taking a spade to Plac Szczepański was no easy task, and to no-one’s surprise numerous archaeological discoveries repeatedly delayed the work. Centuries before any pavement was ever laid down, this was the site of the Church of Saint Szczepan (Stephen) and an adjoining cemetery. When the order was disbanded in the early 19th century, the church was levelled and the inconveniently placed gravestones were likewise ripped out. The arrival of Napoleon’s army in the early 19th century breathed a brief flicker of life in Plac Szczepański when it became a parade ground. Plans for a monument glorifying the diminutive general’s achievements went out the window when the Frenchman’s campaign hit the skids on the plains of Russia and Plac Szczepański soon reverted to functioning as a vegetable market before becoming a car park from the 1960s until the work began.