This is a street with a very lush, but not always glorious history. It was formely a field road between the loosely scattered peasant buildings. The situation began to change in , when the Catholics of Katowice made efforts to build a large parish church, which had to replace a small church with half-timbered walls which was standing by the road. The church was built in neo-Gothic style under the guidance of the architect Alexis Langer in the years - , when the parish dedicated to the Virgin Mary was erected.
Street became important and very quickly was filled up with the new middle-class houses. Each house was ornated more than the other. In addition, there were various offices, government offices, restaurants or hotels in the dwellings. It is impossible not to mention the building on Mariacka Street 1, which was erected in On the ground floor an elegant patisserie was situated, which in was named Kaiser Cafe. After independence it was renamed to 'Astoria' and the place with that name lasted until the late 70th century.
The history of the building no. In the interwar period it housed a branch of the National - Christian Labour unions. After World War the street was inhabited by tenants of the so-called underworld and has gained a very bad reputation. There was even created a kind of asylum for ladies of pleasure, because only on this street they were not punished for prostitution sic! Decent women knew that you cannot walk Mariacka Street too sluggishly.
Immediately the client was approaching, usually in the car, he was opening the window and asking: 'How much do you take? The working girls were in their forties or fifties or at least looked like this. Destroyed, neglected The situation changed dramatically when the decision to revitalize the street was taken, as if it was one of the streets nearby the downtown. A ban on the allocation of apartments in this street for social housing was imposed. Slowly getting rid of troublesome tenants, who made the street to have such a bad opinion.
They began to renovate the houses, which gradually formed various types of entertainment premises. Renovated in the year at the expense of 12 million Polish zloty, the street turned into a pedestrian zone, which has been already for a few years full of vibrant cultural and social life.
