The Cathedral of Sts. Stanislaus and Wenceslaus, on the Wawel hill, is the place where poets and kings and bishops are buried. The Cathedral dates from the year 1000 when Krakow became a bishopic. All of Polish history is somehow reflected here. Barbara leads us up the steps beneath the great mammoth bone, and then we enter the main nave of the Cathedral with the huge silver sarcophagus of St. Stanislaus under a canopy directly ahead. On the right and left are sarcophagi of King Ladislaus Jagiellon and Ladislaus of Varna. Tapestries hang from the arches. It's the "mother of churches" in Poland and the coronation cathedral, but the church is not that large. We make our way around beginning at the left, looking at the chapels that line the side naves. We see Queen Jadwiga's altar, the Sigismund chapel, the white marble sarcophagus of Queen Jadwiga, and several dozen other chapels and monuments. Then most the group climbs to the top of the bell tower (touching the clapper of the bell named "Zygmunt" for good luck). Then we go down through the crypts below: first, underneth a heavy iron door, the poets (Mickiewicz, Slowacki, and Norwid) and then the crypt of St. Leonard (the oldest part of the cathedral), and (after many other crypts), that of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, and the urn with soil from Katyn. Pilsudski is important in Polish history and not to be dismissed as a dictator. From Lithuania, he appreciated Old Poland of many ethnicities including the Jews (who mourned deeply at his death). His notion of a multi-cultural Polish state that included Wilno (Vilnius) and Lwow (L'viv) had outlived its time. After 1945, Poland was moved westward and the eastern borderlands had their fates entwined with the Soviet Union.
The Cathedral of Sts. Stanislaus and Wenceslaus, on the Wawel hill, is the place where poets and kings and bishops are buried. The Cathedral dates from the year 1000 when Krakow became a bishopic. All of Polish history is somehow reflected here. Barbara leads us up the steps beneath the great mammoth bone, and then we enter the main nave of the Cathedral with the huge silver sarcophagus of St. Stanislaus under a canopy directly ahead. On the right and left are sarcophagi of King Ladislaus Jagiellon and Ladislaus of Varna. Tapestries hang from the arches. It's the "mother of churches" in Poland and the coronation cathedral, but the church is not that large. We make our way around beginning at the left, looking at the chapels that line the side naves. We see Queen Jadwiga's altar, the Sigismund chapel, the white marble sarcophagus of Queen Jadwiga, and several dozen other chapels and monuments. Then most the group climbs to the top of the bell tower (touching the clapper of the bell named "Zygmunt" for good luck). Then we go down through the crypts below: first, underneth a heavy iron door, the poets (Mickiewicz, Slowacki, and Norwid) and then the crypt of St. Leonard (the oldest part of the cathedral), and (after many other crypts), that of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, and the urn with soil from Katyn. Pilsudski is important in Polish history and not to be dismissed as a dictator. From Lithuania, he appreciated Old Poland of many ethnicities including the Jews (who mourned deeply at his death). His notion of a multi-cultural Polish state that included Wilno (Vilnius) and Lwow (L'viv) had outlived its time. After 1945, Poland was moved westward and the eastern borderlands had their fates entwined with the Soviet Union. 
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