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Entering the tiered courtyard of the castle , you might imagine that you'd stumbled on an opulent Italian palazzo. This is exactly the effect Sigismund the Old intended when he entrusted the conversion of King Kazimierz's Gothic castle to a Florentine architect in the early 1500s. The major difference from its Italian models lies in the response to climate: the window openings are enlarged to maximize the available light, while the roof is sturdier to withstand snow. A spate of fires, and more recently the corrosive effects of Krakow's atmosphere, have taken their toll on the building, but it still exudes a palatial bravura. After the capital moved to Warsaw, the palace started to deteriorate, and was already in a dilapidated state when the Austrians pillaged it and turned it into barracks. Reconstruction began in earnest in 1880, following Emperor Franz Josef's removal of the troops, and continued throughout the interwar years. Wawel's nadir came during World War II, when Governor Hans Frank transformed the castle into his private quarters, adding insult to injury by turning the royal apartments over to his Nazi henchmen. Luckily, many of the most valuable castle contents were spirited out of the country at the outbreak of war, eventually being returned to Wawel from Canada in 1961, after years of wrangling. Alongside many pieces donated by individual Poles at home and abroad - some of these, incidentally, items plundered by the Nazis but subsequently spotted at art auctions - they make up the core of today's ample and well-restored collection. The castle is divided into four main sections: the Komnaty Krolewskie (State Rooms), Skarbiec (Royal Treasury and Armoury), and the Sztuka Wschodu (Orient of the Wawel) and Wawel Zaginiony (Lost Wawel) exhibitions - remember that tickets for the state rooms and treasury won't gain you admittance to the other two sights, for which you'll need to pay separately. The state rooms are the section to focus on if time is limited, as the best of the art collections - accumulated by the Jagiellonian and Waza dynasties - are to be found here.
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