ARCHITECT ATLAS
Loading atlas
Wawel Castle

Wawel Castle

Bartolommeo Berrecci, Benedykt of Sandomierz & Giovanni Trevano

Photo: Monika Towiańska · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
Kraków, Poland
Client / Owner
Sigismund I the Old
Year
Completed 1536

Casimir III the Great had a Gothic castle built next to the cathedral, and Władysław Jagiełło and Queen Jadwiga rebuilt it in the 14th century. Sigismund I the Old rebuilt the residence from 1507 to 1536 in the Renaissance style, influenced by his wife Bona Sforza. Bartolommeo Berrecci and Francisco from Florence supervised at first, and Benedykt of Sandomierz took over. Berrecci designed Sigismund's Chapel, begun in 1517 with a golden dome.

The arcaded courtyard is Renaissance, with a steeply hipped roof and an upper arcade set higher than the lower ones. After a fire in 1595, Giovanni Trevano directed the rebuilding. Austrian soldiers turned the hill into barracks after 1795, walled up the arcades and demolished two churches. They left in 1905, and restoration began.

The infobox says construction was in the 13th and 14th centuries, while the text says the current castle is 14th century. It had 3,477,951 visitors in 2025.

Comments

  • Loading comments…
Be kind. Anyone can flag a comment for review.

Sign in

or

Your profile

3 to 24 letters, numbers, underscores or periods. It’s shown with your comments.

Save to list

    Edit information

    We look the building up on Wikipedia for you. Architect Atlas lists buildings that have their own Wikipedia article: our test for notoriety and our source of truth.

        Typology
        Style (one to three)
        Photo (shown in a 4:3 frame)

        Drag and zoom to frame the building well. New photos are checked before they appear.

        Every change is checked before it goes live: facts against Wikipedia, photos by eye.