As
the political and cultural heart of Poland through the 16th century,
Wawel Castle is a potent symbol of national identity. It's now a museum
containing five separate sections: Crown Treasury & Armoury; State
Rooms; Royal Private Apartments; Lost Wawel; and the Exhibition of
Oriental Art. Each requires a separate ticket. Of the five, the State
Rooms and Royal Private Apartments are most impressive. There's also a
special display here of the city's most valuable painting, Leonardo da
Vinci's The Lady with an Ermine .
The Renaissance palace you see
today dates from the 16th century. An original, smaller residence was
built in the early 11th century by King Bolesław I Chrobry. Kazimierz
III Wielki (Casimir III the Great) turned it into a formidable Gothic
castle, but when it burned down in 1499, Zygmunt I Stary (Sigismund I
the Old; 1506–48) commissioned a new residence. Within 30 years, the
current Italian-inspired palace was in place. Despite further extensions
and alterations, the three-storey structure, complete with a courtyard
arcaded on three sides, has been preserved to this day.
Repeatedly
sacked and vandalised by the Swedish and Prussian armies, the castle
was occupied in the 19th century by the Austrians, who intended to make
Wawel a barracks, while moving the royal tombs elsewhere. They never got
that far, but they did turn the royal kitchen and coach house into a
military hospital and raze two churches. They also built a new ring of
massive brick walls, largely ruining the original Gothic fortifications.
After
Kraków was incorporated into re-established Poland after WWI,
restoration work began and continued until the outbreak of WWII. The
work was resumed after the war and has been able to recover a good deal
of the castle’s earlier external form and interior decoration.
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