Skarbiec Katedralny, Kraków

Skarbiec Katedralny is Wawel Cathedral’s Gothic treasury building, erected between 1488 and 1500 beside the Sigismund Tower. Its collections grew from medieval gifts of bishops and rulers and include sacred furnishings, royal objects, jewels, and historic keepsakes. Many associated treasures are displayed in Wawel’s Cathedral Museum.

Skarbiec Katedralny is the Cathedral Treasury: a Gothic building beside the Sigismund Tower, within Wawel Cathedral’s complex. Its Gothic character belongs to the medieval manner of pointed arches and ribbed vaults. Bishop Jan Rzeszowski funded the present one-aisle structure between 1488 and 1500.

It has three vaulted bays, while the brick east gable carries stone coats of arms. This small building has guarded an astonishingly long accumulation of sacred and royal wealth. The earliest surviving inventory, ordered in 1101, listed 303 objects, including chalices, crosses, reliquaries, hanging lamps, and candlesticks.

Before a separate Crown Treasury was founded under Władysław Łokietek, Poland’s royal insignia were kept here. The collection has repeatedly been enlarged by bishops and rulers, then depleted by war, looting, and the melting down of precious metal. After the victory at Vienna in 1683, King Jan the Third Sobieski gave the cathedral the stirrup of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa. The treasury still holds historic liturgical furnishings, regalia, jewels, and memorial objects; many further treasures are now displayed in Wawel’s Cathedral Museum.