Lost Wawel

A few metres below the Arcaded Courtyard lies one of the oldest stone buildings in Poland: a pre-Romanesque rotunda shaped like a four-leaf clover, dated by radiocarbon testing to around 970. Lost Wawel is an archaeological and architectural reserve and exhibition in a building put up in the 1940s on the site of the former royal kitchens. You walk along a raised walkway above the walls of structures that simply "got lost" as Wawel Hill was rebuilt over the centuries.

History: from a chance find to a reserve

The walls of the rotunda were found by chance in 1911 by the architect Zygmunt Hendel during work in the old Royal Kitchens. In 1917 Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz uncovered the remains completely, conserved them and reconstructed the upper part, and in the 1920s they were opened to visitors. Further excavations took place in 1956–1966 and in the 1970s, revealing among other things a grave with a gold ring. In 1975 a reserve was created around the rotunda and the Lost Wawel exhibition opened.

The church was originally dedicated to the Virgin Mary and later to Saints Felix and Adauctus – hence the two names you will find in guidebooks. What its upper part looked like is still unknown and remains one of the great puzzles of Polish architectural archaeology.

What to see

• The rotunda – it lies 2.8 to 4 m below today's courtyard; four semicircular apses about 2.7 m across surround a round central space just under 5 m wide. A section of the original sandstone floor survives, and next to it are remains of a pre-Romanesque mausoleum with a skeletal burial.
• Models in the hall – the 18th-century buildings on the hill, including the "Wawel township" with the churches of St Michael and St George, plus models of the Church of St Gereon of 1020 and the Romanesque cathedral.
• Finds from the excavations – a 10th-century stone figurine of an ox, glazed floor tiles from the 13th-century cathedral, a stone statue of St Stanislaus, coins from Bolesław the Bold to John I Albert, rings and dice.
• The royal kitchen – original brick floor, ovens and hood pillars.
• Renaissance details – a cartouche with the arms of Sigismund the Old, an attempted reconstruction of a stone altar made in Bartolomeo Berrecci's workshop in 1521, and, above the walkway, vault ribs from the Gothic Church of St George.

Did you know?

• The rotunda is one of the best-preserved pre-Romanesque buildings in Poland and one of the oldest stone buildings in the country; written sources about the royal kitchens helped identify it.
• Its walls, about a metre thick, rest directly on the rock and are made of layers of flat-split sandstone and limestone.

Tripto tip

The exhibition requires a separate timed ticket, available at the castle ticket offices or on the official site bilety.wawel.krakow.pl – check current opening hours there too, as they change with the seasons. Allow about an hour. Lost Wawel works well as the first stop on the hill: afterwards it is much easier to understand how the buildings around the cathedral and castle evolved.