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Skalka Sanctuary 

Skalka Sanctuary - An Ancient Temple and a Crime Scene

Archaeologists found that the first settlement on the Skalka hill dated back to about 2000 BC. The Pagan Slavs lived there since about the 5^th century, and about the time Poland was baptized in the 10^th century, a Romanesque rotunda church was erected there, thought by some to be older than the first church on the Wawel Hill.

In 1079 the Skalka Sanctuary became the place of martyrdom of the Krakow bishop Stanislaus (since 1253 – St. Stanislaus), who was supposedly murdered by the then Polish king, Boleslaw the Bold, on the very steps of the church when he was celebrating mass. The reasons for the murder of St. Stanislaw remain uncertain, and at least two versions are considered plausible. One of them states that king Boleslaw wanted to punish some of the wives of his knights for being unfaithful while their husbands were at war. The bishop interceded for them – Boleslaw couldn't tolerate such insubordination, and killed St. Stanislaw.

The second version throws a better light on the Polish king – it seems that St. Stanislaus was plotting against him. When the king found out, he ordered to have the bishop quartered.

The Prophecy of St. Stanislaus 

In the 1880s, the Skalka Sanctuary became the burial place for the most distinguished sons of Poland and Krakow. Among others whose tombs are in the Skalka Crypt, there are painters: Stanislaw Wyspianski, Jacek Malczewski and Henryk Siemiradzki (whose most spectacular work is the giant curtain in the Juliusz Slowacki Theater), writer Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski, composer Karol Szymanowski. The youngest tomb belongs to Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel Prize winner of 1980, who died in 2004.  

Skalka Sanctuary - the Burial Place of Distinguished Poles
 

Skalka Sanctuary's Decline

The Skalka Sanctuary, although an important part of Polish heritage, was not well treated – the Gothic church soon reached a state close to ruin and needed to be replaced. The church that stands there now is a late-baroque basilica finished in the 1750s, the second biggest of baroque Krakow Churches, right after the St. Peter and Paul's church.  

St. Stanislaus's body was moved to the Wawel Cathedral, and his magnificent mausoleum can still be seen there.  

Whichever version is true, according to some, the period of regional disintegration in Poland between the 12^th and 14^th century was God's punishment for Boleslaw's deed. But there was also a happy note: supposedly the body of St. Stanislaus miraculously grew back together – and this too was a prophecy of Poland's fate, which was united again by Wladyslaw Lokietek, the king who made Krakow the capital of Poland. 

While the Wawel Cathedral is the place of royal coronations and burials, the Skalka Sanctuary in Krakow is the kings' place of penance, one they had to visit before they could rightfully rule Poland. Some nine-hundred years ago, the Skalka Sanctuary witnessed perhaps the most blood-chilling murder in the history of Poland. Later, it became a resting place for Krakow's and Poland's most distinguished figures.