A Castle, Dragon & Opera

The next (very rainy) morning I met up with Sara and we reserved our tickets for the night train for Prague! But we still had a few days left -

So off course we went off to see Wawel Castle - the very large castle that crowns Krakow. Wawel Hill was used as a center of power since the 11th century (if not earlier). However, the monarchy moved to Warsaw in the 17th century. The castle fell into disrepair and was plundered during the many wars throughout Poland’s history. So today, most of the castle is recent construction (well compared to other castles I have seen).

As a popular site, it was interesting that your tickets were bought with reserved times so they could control the flow of traffic. It made for a better touristing experience I think. First we went to the Cathedral inside the Castle walls. The Kings and Queens of older Poland are buried here. Here it became obvious how convoluted Polish history is - the royalty often ruled many principalities and even other countries (i.e. Lithuania). And as Poland’s borders changed and fluctuated, this was hard for me to grasp without an historical atlas!

The armory and treasure room was quite nice - instead of being overcrowded with everything the museum owns (which often happens with armory collections) this exhibit detailed the cream of the crop. My personal favorite were the cool sabers that included a small gun in the handle. Sadly, I was not allowed to take pictures!

Then we went on to our scheduled tour of the State Rooms. A wonderful collection of Flemish tapestries is owned by the castle. I believe since the fire they still have over 180 or so. What was interesting about these state rooms is that because of a fire these rooms are shown as they were decorated in the early 20th century. It was an odd mix of more modern telephones and bathrooms next to the older style of painted frescoes and baroque filigree - one set of rooms even had the old leather wallpaper (yes, it was rather stinky).

Here is the courtyard where we were supposed to see the opera, but due to the rainy weather, it was moved indoors to the new opera house.

Neat castle courtyard. I love that the older foundations still present. We did not make the archaeology museum here as it was closed for the day :(

We then made our way down the dragon’s den - into a series of caves that are part of the mass of rock the Castle Wawel sits upon. This was neat to see as so many castles have rock foundations but it isn’t always you get to walk through them!

When you emerge you meet the Krakow Dragon! Yes it is touristy and breathes fire every 3 minutes - but hey, anything with fire is fun! There is a legend that there was a dragon that harassed the people of Krakow. So the king asked his sons to kill it. Instead of swords and shields, the two princes slayed the dragon by filling bags of skin with methane gas - after gobbling them up, the dragon suffocated.

Opera
We went that evening to see the opera - Barber of Seville (Cyrulik Sewilski). It was supposed to be at the castle, but because of the rain was performed at the new opera house. Sara tells me there was controversy about the new opera house as it is very modern and many in Krakow would rather have seen it have the same charm as the old opera house. To me it looked like an office building and the theater itself was small. The design reminds me of some of the 70s-80s buildings at some of our stateside college auditoriums.

We ended up leaving early as some of the singers were being drowned out by the orchestra (I don’t think they were ready for tha change in venue) and we were both rather tired. So we headed to the Rynek for a beer in the cool evening before heading home for the night.