Museum
Wawel Royal Castle-State Art Collection
Wawel 5, 31-001 Kraków
Renaissance royal residence and museum holding a legendary tapestry collection that survived a wartime odyssey to Canada.
This guide to the Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków follows curator Stanisław Świerz-Zaleski, who in September 1939 raced to load the castle's prized royal tapestries onto barges just ahead of the German invasion. It traces their journey out of Poland through Romania, Malta, France and England to wartime Canada, alongside an architect named Jozef Krzywda-Polkowski. The two men spent the whole war guarding the crates in the National Archives in Ottawa, far from the halls where the tapestries once hung.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.