Kopiec Kościuszki

About this audio guide

This guide to Kopiec Kościuszki in Kraków opens with an odd fact: the tallest peak in the Australian Alps is named after this mound, after explorer Paul Strzelecki climbed it in 1840 and saw something in its shape that reminded him of home. It goes back further, to 1820, when thousands of ordinary Poles, farmers, students, soldiers, carried baskets of earth up this hillside by hand to honor Tadeusz Kościuszko, the general who had fought alongside George Washington, at a moment when Poland no longer existed on any map. You'll hear where the urns inside hold soil from his battlefields on two continents. Look up at the granite boulder crowning the summit, and out at the brick walls of the Austrian fortress that later ringed its base.