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All bar four of Poland's forty-five monarchs are buried in the cathedral, and the royal tombs and chapels, or Groby Krolewskie (Tues-Sat 9am-3pm, Sun noon-3pm; 6zl) are a directory of central European architecture, art and sculpture of the last six centuries. Beginning from the right of the entrance, the Gothic Kaplica Swietokrzyska (Holy Cross Chapel) is the burial chamber of King Kazimierz IV Jagiello (1447-92). The boldly coloured Byzantine-looking paintings on the walls and ceiling were completed by artists from Novgorod, one of a small group of such murals in Poland, while the king's red marble tomb is the characteristically expressive work of Veit Stoss, of Mariacki fame. Two carved Gothic altars and a beautiful triptych of the Holy Trinity in the side panels round off a sumptuously elegant masterpiece. Moving down the aisle, the next two chapels celebrate aristocratic families rather than kings: the Potocki (a Neoclassical creation) and Szafraniec (a Baroque ensemble at the foot of the Silver Bells tower). They are followed by the majestic, if gloomy, Kaplica Wazow (Waza Chapel), a Baroque mausoleum to the seventeenth-century royal dynasty whose design is based on the Sigismund Chapel (see below). Protecting the chapel are some elaborately worked bronze doors displaying the dynastic coats of arms along with those of all their territories. The Kaplica Zygmuntowska (Sigismund Chapel), whose shining gilded cupola - its exterior regularly replated owing to the corrosive effects of pollution - dominates the courtyard outside. Designed for King Sigismund the Old (1506-48) by the Italian architect Bartolomeo Berrecci and completed in 1533, it's an astonishing piece of Renaissance design and ornamentation, widely regarded as one of the artistic gems of the period, with intricate sandstone and marble carvings, and superb sculpted figures above the sarcophagi of the king, his son Sigismund August and his wife Queen Anna. The two altarpieces are spectacular, too: the silver Altar of the Virgin was designed by craftsmen from Nuremberg and includes Passion paintings by George Pencz, a pupil of Durer. Opposite the chapel is the modern tomb of Queen Jadwiga , wife of King Wladyslaw Jagiello and one of the country's most loved monarchs - in reality, her remains are buried nearby beneath her own favourite crucifix. Venerable fourteenth-century bishops occupy several subsequent chapels, while the Gothic red Hungarian marble tomb of King Kazimierz the Great , immediately to the right of the high altar, is a dignified tribute in marble and sandstone to the revered monarch, during whose reign the cathedral was actually consecrated. The fourteenth-century Kaplica Mariacka (St Mary's Chapel), directly behind the altar and connected to the castle by a passage, was remodelled in the 1590s by Santi Gucci to accommodate the austere black marble and sandstone tomb of King Stefan Batory (1576-86). The tomb of King Wladyslaw the Short (1306-33), on the left-hand side of the altar, is the oldest in the cathedral, completed soon after his death; the reclining, coronation-robed figure lies on a white sandstone tomb edged with expressive mourning figures.
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