Kraków is more than a thousand years old. In an account by the Arab traveler in 965/966 it was an important economic centre which proves that the town must have been established much earlier than that. On 5 June 1257 a municipality was created on Magdeburg Law, and a social and legal organization was formed by the then highest state authority. The granting of a town charter pursuant to Magdeburg Law launched the period of a dynamic development of Kraków as a modern economic entity, social and legal local governmental structure and a centre with high aspirations and cultural potential.