Krypta pod Wieżą Srebrnych Dzwonów, Kraków

Krypta pod Wieżą Srebrnych Dzwonów is a Wawel Cathedral burial chamber designed by Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz. It contains Marshal Józef Piłsudski’s coffin, his mother’s grave earth, soldiers’ memorial tablets, and a Piłsudski bust. Its vestibule holds the sarcophagus of President Lech Kaczyński and Maria Kaczyńska.

This is the crypt beneath the Silver Bells Tower, a burial chamber under Wawel Cathedral. Its central figure is Marshal Józef Piłsudski, whose coffin was moved here from Saint Leonard’s Crypt, where he had first been buried. The chamber was designed by Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz within the cathedral’s Romanesque tower.

Piłsudski asked not to be entirely separated from his mother: beside him is a clay urn containing earth from the grave of Maria Piłsudska, née Billewicz. She lies at Vilnius’s Rossa Cemetery, where the marshal’s heart is also buried. Notice the memorial tablets on the walls, which honour soldiers, and the bust of Piłsudski set into the corner; it is the work of Konstanty Laszczka.

The openwork grille closing the crypt carries the arms of Poland, Lithuania, and the Piłsudski family. In the vestibule, the sarcophagus holds President Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria. They died in the Smolensk air crash on the tenth of April, twenty ten. Their names appear in the inscription: “LECH ALEKSANDER KACZYŃSKI | MARIA HELENA MACKIEWICZ KACZYŃSKA.”