Wawel Cathedral

Pause at the top of the ramp and listen. Footsteps ring on old stone, pigeons rise from the courtyard, and a guide somewhere speaks softly in Polish. Ahead, the cathedral looks less like one building than several pressed together. There are towers of different heights and domes of different colours, one of them flashing gold in the sun. Before you go inside, look up at the main entrance. Something strange hangs there on a chain.

Those are bones. Huge, pale and very old. Legend has it they belong to the Wawel Dragon, the beast that once lived in a cave below this hill and terrorised the town. In reality they are the remains of prehistoric animals, likely including a mammoth and a whale. Locals say that as long as the bones hang here, the cathedral will stand. It is a fitting welcome to a building where Polish history and Polish storytelling have always stood side by side.

This is the Royal Archcathedral Basilica of Saints Stanislaus and Wenceslaus, usually just called Wawel Cathedral. It is the third church built on this spot. The first appeared in the early eleventh century, soon after Poland became Christian. A second, Romanesque church followed. Romanesque is the heavy, round-arched style of early medieval Europe. Parts of it still survive under your feet, and we will come back to them.

The Gothic building you see today was begun in the early fourteenth century. It is linked to King Władysław the Elbow-high, a short ruler with large ambitions who reunited a divided Poland. He was crowned here in 1320, and the church was consecrated in 1364. From that moment, Wawel became the coronation church of the Polish kings. For centuries, this was where a man or woman became a monarch, and where most of them were laid to rest.

Step inside, and the light changes. The nave is narrow and high, and it is crowded with marble, bronze and gilded wood. At its centre stands a silver coffin under a black and gold canopy. This is the shrine of Saint Stanislaus, a bishop of Kraków. In 1079 he was killed on the orders of King Bolesław the Bold, after a bitter conflict between church and crown. Later he was declared a saint, and he became a patron of Poland.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Polish kings were crowned close to the tomb of a bishop whom a Polish king had murdered. For centuries, every new ruler began his reign beside a reminder that royal power had limits. The story of Stanislaus shaped how Poles thought about their kings. It also helps to explain why the church holds such a strong place in national life, even today.

Now walk along the south side of the cathedral. Many chapels open off the aisles, and each one is the gift of a family or a reign. One of them looks very different from the rest. This is the Sigismund Chapel, built in the early sixteenth century for King Sigismund the Old. The Florentine architect Bartolomeo Berrecci designed it. Many historians call it one of the finest Renaissance buildings north of the Alps.

Inside, the chapel feels calm and measured after the crowded Gothic nave. The red marble tombs of the last Jagiellonian kings rest beneath a coffered dome. The dome is lined with carved square panels and rises toward a small lantern of light. From the courtyard, this is the golden dome you saw earlier. Its neighbour, the Vasa Chapel, came later. It was made for the next royal dynasty, and from outside its dome is dark. Gold and black stand side by side, two dynasties in two colours.

Go down into the crypts and the air turns cool. Kings and queens lie here, but so do people who never wore a crown. The poets Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki rest here, as does Tadeusz Kościuszko. He led a Polish uprising and also fought in the American War of Independence. Marshal Józef Piłsudski, a key founder of modern independent Poland, is buried here too. Burial at Wawel became the highest honour the nation could give.

One part of the underground is older than everything above it. The Crypt of Saint Leonard belongs to the earlier Romanesque cathedral. Its squat columns and low vaults are among the oldest surviving spaces on the hill. In 1946, a young priest named Karol Wojtyła celebrated his first Mass here. More than thirty years later, he became Pope John Paul the Second. It is a quiet room, but it connects the medieval church with the twentieth century.

Before you leave, climb the wooden stairs of the Sigismund Tower. The steps are steep and the beams are close around you. At the top hangs the Sigismund Bell, cast in 1520 and named after the same king as the golden chapel. It is the largest of the cathedral's bells. Today it rings only on major religious and national occasions. When it sounds, people across the old town stop to listen.

There is one more tradition up here. Locals say that if you touch the bell's heart, the heavy clapper inside, with your left hand, you will be lucky in love. It is folklore, not doctrine, but the metal has a smooth shine from countless hopeful hands. From the tower windows you can also see over the rooftops of Kraków and down to the curve of the Vistula River below the hill.

When you step back into the courtyard, turn and look at the cathedral once more. Notice how the Gothic towers, the golden dome and the dark dome sit together without matching. Each part was added by a different age with different ideas of beauty. Then look again at the bones above the door, still hanging on their chain. As long as they stay there, locals say, so will everything behind them.