Wawel Castle

Standing shoulder to shoulder with Wawel Cathedral is Wawel Castle. Built on the site where the first humans in the area settled, during the Stone Age, this castle is the location where the first ever Polish King Mieszko I (965-1025) built his royal fort. The castle was expanded, reconstructed & renovated many times through the ages.

According to the legend the place was first inhabited by a fierce dragon who terrorized the city during the reign of the first ruler in history, named Krakus in the 7th century. As the power-center of the nation’s capital & official residence of most Polish kings in history, Wawel castle & specifically its throne room were Poland’s nucleus during the city’s golden age & the central axis of the Renaissance Empire of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.It was also a hub of culture and art, ground zero of all the constituent elements that finally forged the Polish national identity.

Today the Castle is one of the country’s exceptional art museums. Established in 1930, the museum encompasses ten curatorial departments responsible for collections of paintings, including an important collection of Italian Renaissance paintings, prints, sculpture, textiles, among them the Sigismund II Augustus tapestry collection, goldsmith’s work, arms and armor, ceramics, Meissen porcelain, and period furniture.

The museum’s holdings in oriental art include the largest collection of Ottoman tents in Europe. Over one million visitors tour the Castle’s permanent collections and temporary exhibitions each year. The Castle’s permanent exhibitions recreate the appearance of the royal residence in the Renaissance and Baroque eras. More