The story of Wawel Cathedral

For more than four centuries, Polish kings were crowned right here, before the high altar: from 1320 until the last coronation in 1764. Nearly 1,000 years old, Wawel Cathedral is the third church on this site. The first stone cathedral, begun around the year 1000, was destroyed by a Bohemian raid in 1038/1039; the second burned around 1305. The present Gothic building was consecrated in 1364 under Casimir the Great.

Its crypts became a national pantheon: Piast and Jagiellonian kings lie here, and in the 19th century Tadeusz Kościuszko, Prince Józef Poniatowski and the poet Adam Mickiewicz joined them. Under a black marble canopy stands the silver coffin of St Stanislaus, made in 1669–1671 after the Swedes stole the earlier one in 1655. Outside, look for the golden dome of Sigismund's Chapel, called the purest example of Renaissance architecture outside Italy.

A young priest, Karol Wojtyła, said his first Mass in the crypt on 2 November 1946.