Wawel Castle

Interesting facts

The Sigismund Bell in the cathedral tower, cast in 1520, weighs almost 13 tonnes and needs 12 ringers; it sounds only on major national and religious occasions.

After seizing Wawel in 1794, Prussian troops took the Polish crown jewels to Berlin and melted them down for gold and gems; only the sword Szczerbiec survived.

The coffered ceiling of the Ambassadors' Hall is set with thirty carved wooden heads by the sculptor Sebastian Tauerbach.

Sigismund I and his son Sigismund Augustus bought more than 350 tapestries woven in Flanders and the Netherlands, many after designs by Michiel Coxie.

The Hen's Foot Tower takes its name from the three projecting buttresses at its base, which resemble the foot of a chicken.

In 1925 a stone fragment from Wawel was set into Chicago's Tribune Tower as a tribute to the city's large Polish community.

Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man was removed from Wawel during the German occupation and has never been recovered.

In 2021 Hungary returned a 16th-century child's armour made for the young Sigismund Augustus, taken to Budapest by mistake after the First World War.

In 1921 the Polish parliament declared Wawel the official residence of the President of Poland; it became purely a museum after 1945.

The hill is Jurassic limestone riddled with caves, and its name may come from an old Polish word for a ravine that once split it.

Why it is worth it

Wawel is where Poland keeps its memory. On a limestone hill above the Vistula stand the royal castle and, beside it, the cathedral in which Polish kings were crowned and buried, and the whole ensemble has been part of the Historic Centre of Kraków World Heritage Site since 1978, when it was inscribed among the very first sites on the UNESCO list. The castle is also one of the most visited art museums in the country, with close to 3.5 million visitors in 2025.

The hill was fortified early; stone churches and halls appeared here in the 10th and 11th centuries, when Kraków became a ducal and then royal seat. Casimir III the Great built a Gothic castle around a courtyard in the 14th century, and Władysław Jagiełło and Queen Jadwiga added towers such as the Hen's Foot. The decisive transformation came under Sigismund I the Old: after a fire in 1499 he had the residence rebuilt between 1507 and 1536 in the new Italian manner, with Francesco the Florentine and then Bartolomeo Berrecci in charge. The result is the arcaded courtyard that defines Wawel – Italian in its loggias, northern in its steep projecting roof and an unusually tall top storey. Berrecci also designed the gold-domed Sigismund Chapel on the cathedral, often called the finest Renaissance work north of the Alps. After another fire in 1595 Giovanni Trevano rebuilt part of the castle for Sigismund III Vasa, who soon moved the court to Warsaw.

Decline followed: Swedish occupations in the 17th century, Prussian looting of the crown jewels in 1794, and decades as an Austrian barracks, when the arcades were walled up. Restoration began after the army left in 1905 and was paid for by public subscription – donors' names are cut into the bricks of the wall near the northern gate. During the Second World War the castle was the seat of the German governor Hans Frank. Today the tour covers the State Rooms and Royal Private Apartments, hung with the 16th-century Flemish tapestries acquired by the last Jagiellonians (some 150 of which spent the war in Canada), the Crown Treasury with the coronation sword Szczerbiec, the armoury, Europe's largest collection of Ottoman tents in the oriental art exhibition, and the 'Lost Wawel' exhibition. Below the hill, by the river, a metal dragon breathes fire in front of the Dragon's Den cave.

Getting there

Wawel sits on the left bank of the Vistula, less than a kilometre from the heart of Kraków. Kraków Główny, the main station, is the city's rail hub, and regional trains link it with Kraków John Paul II Airport (KRK) at Balice, about 11 km west of the city centre. From the city centre, the castle is an easy walk.

From the encyclopaedia

The Wawel Royal Castle and the Wawel Hill on which it sits constitute the most historically and culturally significant site in Poland. A fortified residency on the Vistula River in Kraków, it was established on the orders of King Casimir III the Great and enlarged over the centuries into a number of structures around a Polish Renaissance courtyard. It represents nearly all European architectural styles of the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods. With over 3.47 million visitors in 2025, Wawel Castle is the most visited art museum in Poland and the 14th most visited art museum in the world.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Wawel Castle

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia