This place attests to the rank of poetry in the Polish collective imagination, at the same time reminding us of the Great Emigration in the 19th century and the surrogate “spiritual state” its representatives developed in the arts. The mortal remains of Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki, the greatest of the Polish Romantic wieszcze – poet-prophets, were brought here from Paris so that, to quote the words of the greatest Polish statesman between the two world wars, Józef Piłsudski, “they are on a par with kings”. Once antagonists, today the two rest in peace in their sarcophagi, one behind the other. The urns in the crypt contain soil from the grave of Słowacki’s mother Salomea, and from the grave of the last of the great Polish Romantic poets – Cyprian Kamil Norwid. The medallion presents another Polish émigré artist: the composer Fryderyk Chopin. It is a copy of the medallion on Chopin’s grave in Paris, made in Greek marble.

The Crypt of the Poet-Prophets is a section of the Wawel necropolis, which you descend to from the northern (left) aisle of the cathedral. Admission free.