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If you've got the stamina, head for the Skarbiec (Royal Treasury and Armoury; same ticket and hours as Komnaty Krolewskie) in the northeast corner of the castle (entrance on the ground floor). The paucity of crown jewels on display, however, is testimony to the ravages of the past. Much of the treasury's contents had been sold off by the time of the Partitions to pay off marriage dowries and debts of state. The Prussians did most of the rest of the damage, purloining the coronation insignia in 1795, then melting down the crown and selling off its jewels. The vaulted Gothic Kazimierz Room contains the finest items from a haphazard display of lesser royal possessions including rings, crosses and the coronation shoes and burial crown of Sigismund August. The oldest exhibit is a fifth-century ring inscribed with the name "MARTINVS", found near Krakow. The prize exhibit in the next-door Jadwiga and Jagiello Room is the solemnly displayed Szczerbiec , a thirteenth-century copy of the weapon used by Boleslaw the Brave during his triumphal capture of Kiev in 1018, used from then on in the coronation of Polish monarchs. Like other valuable items in the collection here, the sword was taken to Canada during World War II for safekeeping. The other two exhibits here are an early-sixteenth-century sword belonging to Sigismund the Old and the oldest surviving royal banner, made in 1533 for the coronation of Sigismund August's third wife, Catherine von Habsburg. In the following room are a variety of items connected with Jan Sobieski , most notably the regalia of the Knights of the Order of the Holy Ghost sent to him by the pope as thanks for defeating the Turks at Vienna in 1683. Things get more military from here on. The next barrel-vaulted room contains a host of finely crafted display weapons, shields and helmets, while the final Armoury Room is dedicated to serious warfare, with weapons captured over five centuries from Poland's host of foreign invaders, including copies of the banners seized during the epic Battle of Grunwald (1410), a fearsome selection of huge double-handed swords and a forbidding array of spears with weird and wonderful spikes on top.
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