For now, this is part history, part myth, part legend—who knows for sure. Krakow has a dragon story, which is woven into the history of the city. Formed about 25 million years ago, the spectacular limestone formation of Wawel Hill is not the solid piece of rock it appears to be. The story goes that these craggy chambers below Wawel were once home to Smok Wawelski , or the Wawel Dragon , a particularly nasty creature that loved to gorge himself on sheep and local maidens.
Legend has it that, as the village ran out of local virgins, the King promised the hand of his only daughter to the hero who could vanquish the evil beast. This gave the dragon an unquenchable thirst, so he ran and drank half the river, causing his extended belly to explode. Thus, the town was freed of the dragon and Krak married the princess. The people built a city around it, named Krakow after their savior king. Nice story. The dragon is part of Krakow culture now, an unofficial emblem, and we saw a dragon on all kinds of items—-from flags, to T-shirts, to mugs, small statuettes etc.
Interesting how a legend can become a city mascot. Read Full Post ». Posted in architecture , art , buildings , commemoration , education , Europe travel , History , Krakow , museum , Poland , religious buildings , science , tagged astrolobe , Chopin , Collegium Maius , Copernicus , famous Poles , first globes , Krakow , marie Curie , old universities in Europe , old universities in the world , Poland on Tuesday, November 11, 3 Comments ». The Collegium Maius Museum : We watched the 11am clock show and at that time bought a ticket for the next English museum tour at 1pm.
You have to go on a guided tour in a small group, which is offered a few times a day. See Part B next post for the tour. It was a great tour, which took about an hour and a half, although the allotted time was one hour. Our guide was excellent, fluent in English and a really remarkable fount of knowledge and information about her topic, which is very broad—anything and everything to do with this university, all the contents of all the rooms, the people and artists involved etc.
Our group asked many questions and she was able to answer pretty much all of them in detail. Security was tight getting in, and then a guard followed the group and closed doors behind the group as the people exited each room. Universities in those days were closely linked to religion and this is still very Catholic in tradition. Religion dictated what they could do. Originally the professors were celibate and lived and ate together like monks, showing the importance of religion.
