Zinar Castle

The small Gothic church of St. Barbara, located in the heart of the city, once stood ... in the middle of a cemetery. How is this possible?

The small Gothic church of St. Barbara was built in the fourteenth century, and its construction was partially financed by Queen Jadwiga herself, today a saint and patron of Poland. Initially, it probably served as a cemetery chapel, because it stands in the area of ​​the former cemetery that surrounded St. Mary's Basilica (today's St. Mary's Square).

The buildings of the monastery of O. Jesuits (corner of Mały Rynek and ul. Sienna). Here lived Fr. Jakub Wujek, author of the Polish translation of the Bible, for almost 370 years of the official Polish translation of the Holy Scriptures. He also died here in 1597 and was buried in the basement of the church of St. Barbara.

At the end of the 18th century, there was a university clinic in the monastery buildings, headed by prof. Rafał Józef Czerwiakowski. The father of Polish surgery and anatomy, he was famous for regularly carrying out autopsies and dissection exercises here. The autopsy material was the corpses of convicts or the corpses of the poor, which were secretly bought from gravediggers. The news that the professor "dead countries" caused such indignation among the inhabitants of Krakow that the medic had to walk around the city for some time, escorted by the city guards!