Bazylika Świętego Michała Archanioła i Świętego Stanisława Biskupa, Kraków

Before you is the Basilica of Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr, a Roman Catholic church commonly called Skałka, or the Church on the Rock. Its present Baroque character comes from the rebuilding and decoration carried out between 1733 and 1751. The Pauline Fathers have cared for this sanctuary since 1472.

Skałka’s central story is Saint Stanislaus, Kraków’s bishop. Local tradition identifies this church as the place of his martyrdom during the conflict with King Bolesław the Bold in 1079. Stanislaus was canonized in 1253, while the king was forced to leave Poland.

For generations, every newly chosen Polish king came here on the eve of coronation, making a penitential pilgrimage in acknowledgement of that royal crime. Beneath the church is a national pantheon: the burial place of distinguished Poles linked especially with Kraków. Among them are the historian Jan Długosz, the artists Stanisław Wyspiański and Jacek Malczewski, the composer Karol Szymanowski, and the Nobel Prize-winning poet Czesław Miłosz. So Skałka brings together a saint’s cult, the memory of Poland’s monarchy, and a remarkable roll call of its writers, artists, and thinkers.