A striking feature of Cracow's architecture from c. 1300 to 1550 is the remarkable similarity among four grand basilican churches with elongated choirs, as well as a range of sacred and secular buildings featuring facades of limestone ashlar with tracery decoration.Moreover, the cityscape has lost smaller, equally uniform double-naved churches, and (apart from St. Mary’s Basilica) tall spires crowned with clusters of pinnacles. Attributing each of these groups to a single workshop is not convincing; instead, the likeness of forms rather stemmed from the expectations of patrons. Thus the reasons lie more in social phenomena than purely artistic factors. The paper aims to explore, in a comparative context, these prestigious buildings as manifestations of the identities of various interest groups and social strata, occasionally taking the form of a kind of interplay between the state authority, the episcopal hierarchy, and the municipal commune.