The Kraków złoty (Polish: złotówka krakowska) - was a currency issued in the independent Free City of Kraków in 1835. It was subdivided into 30 groszy. The coins were minted in the Imperial Mint in Vienna.
The Free City of Kraków created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna was granted the right to introduce its own currency but it chose to enter the monetary union with the Kingdom of Poland and did not implement the right to introduce its own currency until 1835. Between 1815 and 1835 the złoty of the Congress Kingdom of Poland was the official currency of the Free City of Kraków. During the November Uprising also the złoty introduced by the revolutionary government in the Kingdom of Poland was in circulation in the Free City. Its obverse featured the crowned coat of arms consisting of the Polish White Eagle and Lithuanian Vytis, replacing earlier used Russian two-headed eagle with an escutcheon with the Polish White Eagle on its chest. Following the defeat of the Polish army in the November Uprising (1831), the Russian government decided to remove an effigy of the Polish eagle from the currency of the Congress Kingdom of Poland, replacing it with the Russian two-headed eagle. This move of the Russians made the government of the Free City of Kraków to protest, under the pressure exercised by its own citizens who refused to accept the new coins, by introducing its own currency featuring the Polish White Eagle (which constituted a part of the arms of the Free City). The new currency was to circulate in Kraków alongside the Polish złoty.
The Kraków złoty was equivalent to the Polish in the Russian-controlled Congress Kingdom, which had a fixed exchange rate to the Russian currencies of 1 kopeck = 2 grosze, or 0.15 ruble = 1 złoty. Following the annexation of Kraków by Austria in 1846 the Kraków złoty remained in circulation until the end of 1847 when it was replaced by Austro-Hungarian gulden. The exchange rate was 1 gulden=4 złote 12 groszy. | 