Collegium Maius, Kraków

Collegium Maius is a university building of stone and brick, and the oldest surviving building of the Jagiellonian University. Its history reaches back to the 14th century, while the building took its present form after expansion and rebuilding in the late 15th century. Look through the Gothic portal into the courtyard: arcaded walkways surround a space with a well, and crystal-like vaulting gives the covered galleries a finely cut texture.

Lectures once took place on the ground floor; above them were shared rooms, libraries and professors’ quarters. In the 1490s, Nicolaus Copernicus studied here, before developing ideas that transformed European astronomy. Today the building houses the Jagiellonian University Museum.

Its collections include astronomical instruments, an Arabic astrolabe from 1054, and the Jagiellonian Globe, among the oldest globes to mark the American continent by name and location. The museum also preserves lecture rooms, communal halls, a library, professors’ rooms and a treasury with university maces. Restoration directed by Karol Estreicher lasted from 1949 through 1964 and returned the building to its appearance before 1840. What you see is both a working piece of medieval university architecture and a museum shaped by centuries of scholarship.