Kraków Barbican

This guide to the Kraków Barbican opens in 1768, during the desperate Bar Confederation uprising, when defenders down to their last ammunition fired a soldier's own coat button into the Russian ranks below and struck their commander, a general named Panin. It steps back to the fortress itself, a squat brick ring of turrets raised in 1498 by King John the First Albert after watching thousands of his soldiers die in a Moldavian forest, and to the moat and covered passage that once linked it to Florian's Gate. It follows the Austrian siege of 1587 and the demolition sweep of the early 1800s that took most of Kraków's medieval walls, and the two senators who argued that at least this one ring should be spared. Look for the plaque marking where that improvised shot was fired.