Dan Snow's History Hit - Medieval Krakow

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

In the Middle Ages, Krakow was one of Central Europe’s greatest cities: a thriving crossroads of kings, merchants and legends, crowned by a royal castle and haunted by tales of dragons. But in 1241, catastrophe arrived. Mongol armies swept in from the east, devastating the region and reducing Krakow to ashes. Yet from the ruins, the city would rise again, stronger and grander than before. Join Dan on a journey to uncover Krakow’s extraordinary medieval story - exploring its castles, streets and legends to discover how invasion, destruction and remarkable resilience forged one of Europe’s most magnificent cities.If you'd like to visit any of the locations in this episode, you can visit https://visitmalopolska.pl/en_GB for more informationThe Wieliczka Salt Mine at https://www.wieliczka-saltmine.com/The Rynek Underground Museum: https://muzeumkrakowa.pl/en/branches/rynek-undergroundFor more information about visiting Wawel Castle, search https://wawel.krakow.pl/enThis episode was made in association with the Polish National Tourist Office, with huge thanks to Mirosław Bartyzel, Dorota Wojciechowska and the Malopolska Tourism Organisation.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.Dan Snow's History Hit is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history hit.com slash subscribe. It was a world of kings and queens, knights and castles. It was a world in which people talked of dragons and magic. At its heart, it said Krakow, the city in modern-day Poland. In the Middle Ages, Krakow was one of the great cities of Central Europe, a crossroads between the Baltic world, the German lands,

the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, with trade routes stretching east towards the Kivan Russe and the Black Sea. It was a city of bustling market squares and cobbled lanes, merchant caravans, church bells, the sparking Vistula River, and the towering royal castle high on a promontory. Beneath that, according to the legend, a dragon lay in wait. In the 13th century, Krakow must have seemed as close to a fairy tale as anywhere on earth, much that still does today. But like all fairy tales, there is threat, there is a dark twist.

in this city's story. In 1241, an enemy appeared on the horizon to threaten the kingdom. From the east came the Tartars, what we now commonly call the Mongols. Their hungry eyes set on Europe. They tore through burning towns and settlements, leaving a wake of destruction in their path as they headed west. Medieval chroniclers thought it was the end of days. These were the horsemen of the apocalypse. These Mongols were... reduced Krakow to ashes. But, from the ruins, heroes emerged, determined to rebuild the city grander than ever before. Krakov would rise again, this time stronger and more powerful, the magnificent iteration

of the city that we still see today. This is one of Europe's most dramatic medieval stories. And in this episode of Dan Snow's history, we're going to tell it properly. As I always say, the best place to understand history is to go to the place where it happened. So join us on a summer adventure to Poland as we trace the rise, destruction and rebirth of one of medieval Europe's greatest cities. Well friends, summer has arrived here in the Northern Hemisphere and there is nothing better to do on a summer's day. Let me tell you, this is a fact. You can take this one to the bank. There is nothing better to do than get off a train or a plane and head into the heart of a medieval city right into its core.

We're surrounded by ancient buildings and street bars and cafes and kids frolicking in fountains. You have to choose between a museum or a church to hit first, a little castle, or perhaps have your first beer on the continent. And I'm here now with Emma Yarniger, medieval powerhouse, internet sensation, host of our sister podcast Gone Medieval. And surprise, surprise, Ellen and I have chosen the latter. We've chosen to go straight to the beer. And how are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm about to be better.

The moment that first Polish beer hits my lips, I'll tell you that much. That's a key. I'm now trying to wait's attention. We are on the main market square here. How do we pronounce this thing? Yeah, yeah. Rinek Gourn. Okay, so that's good.

Because actually, among your astonishing list of achievements is the fact you are a Central Airplane. When do you want to be, you can present as Central Air Beer. That's absolutely right, you know. And it is one of these funny things where I genuinely feel that way I get off the plane and I'm surrounded by the Baroque architecture. I can hear a Slavic language and I can see delicious beer. I do very much feel if a...

The check part of your ancestry comes out. It comes popping out to the surface. And we love that. We're just going to get a quick beer. Okay. Promeni. Proposé, two, drus. A perfect knee.

Look at that. We're all to a flying start. Two beers ordered, and Eleanor Yanniger, you legend. Let's get into it. While waiting for it to arrive, we get a sense of the period of Europe. We're in the 12th century. So people be perhaps a little bit more familiar with England and France. At this time, we've got those plantagenets trying to hold on to that empire that you and I talked about many times,

that Transchannel, Angevan Empire. But what's going on in this part of Europe? Who are the big players? Is this part of a big political unit, big empire? or it's one of a small city state? What's going on? So the poles are a really scrappy bunch and they're incredibly interesting

because they're very wealthy. This is an incredibly wealthy part of the world because it's very, very fertile. So this is one of those big bread baskets for the surrounding region. It's also incredibly well-located for the purposes of trade. And of course, you know, at this point in time,

we're in what you call the high medieval period. So stuff's going pretty well, right? We're seeing the expansion of cities, expansions of populations more generally, and increasing trade with the East. And Krakow and Poland more generally are very well situated in order to take advantage of that. Because they are a really great crossroads for stuff that is coming out of the East. And that I don't mean just Asia here, but also like the Russe, which is increasingly important. And that is a big place where you get a lot of fur from. You know, I'm always talking about how important wool is in the medieval period because there's no central heating.

Yeah, in cold places, fur. It's really important. Super material. Absolutely. And so you're going to want to have that as well. And so the poles are in this really incredible position because of all of these incredible natural resources. But they're also rubbing up cheek by jowl against some pretty major power players as well, which can often put them out of disadvantage. So to our West world, what, the German lands, holding overrador.

Holy Roman Empire. And I'll tell you what, those guys are nothing, if not rapacious. If you think they're not eyeing up Poland regularly, you know, think again. And then on the other side, suddenly, especially in this period, sweeping in off of the steps of Asia, we have the Mongols. And this is a really interesting point because, yeah, listen, I'll be real, the steps are pretty far away. But you'd be surprised how far you can get on horseback, right? Mongols show up because they want to amalgamate you into the Pax Mongolia, into their trade empire. So this is almost like a hinge point of Eurasia.

We've got these Slavic, we've got Mongol civilizations to the east, we've got... There's Hungarians, we should mention the Hungarians, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Poland isn't Poland as such, you know, in the same way where there are two different states that now comprise the Czech Republic, Bohemia and Moravia. Same thing here in Poland. And in Krakow, you're actually a part of what is called Pomeranium at the time. And yes, that is where the little dogies come from. Oh.

So it's also this place that is continuously growing. It is eating other lands that are next to it, yes. But Krakov itself is the center of this incredibly important locality. Krakov is indeed one of those cities that you will see show up, for example, on medieval Mapamundi, right? Everybody knows where Krakov is, and they're going to say that is a center of trade, that is somewhere that is literally on the map. So Milan, Paris, London, Krakow, this would be seen as, there's nothing different about

this. Absolutely not. So we're on the Vistula River and that's why it's an obvious place for a settlement here. Like it's a geographically, it's a perfect place. Absolutely. You know, rivers are one of the really important things in terms of trading and shipping. The fastest way to move any good in the medieval world is by boat.

So moving things up and down, the Vistula is, including. incredibly worthwhile. So at the beginning of the 12th century, say, Krakoff, is this a world that would be recognizable to those people listen to your podcast, fans of the equivalent period in England and France? Is it a world of magnates and royal authority? Absolutely. Which is one of the reasons why I'm always surprised that people aren't more interested in Poland

because maybe do you want castles? Do you want huge noble families? Do you want all of the clashing back and forth? They are absolutely doing that here. And in particular, there is one incredible. important castle, which is Vavelle Castle, here near Krakow. And so, of course, if you have a very important trade center, very important trade routes, you're also going to have a castle because there's going to be some rich guys who want to take advantage of that, right?

So you've got to build a castle so that you can protect that trade route and also that you can tax people who aren't using it. So it's a world of wealth and commerce, but also threat and violence. Absolutely. You know, it is the same here as anywhere. Fundamentally, this is a world where we've got one class of people who have a monopoly on licit violence, right? The nobility. And if you can be the people who are the arbiters of who can raise an army, who is the protectors of the church? And does the church need protecting? Yeah, they're going to argue absolutely that they do. Who knows when the terrible pagan, they always say Mongol hordes are going to come sweeping in and someone is going to literally need to

protect the church. So that helps the nobility to really rise to power and build these incredible castles because people see a need for that. And it's so beautiful here. In a way, this is one of the best preserved medieval European cities. 100%. Like there is a reason why I was taught this as an American at university level, right? And it's because you can come here and you can actually see these things in action. And you know, this is why I moved to you. Europe was to be able to come to places like Krakow and to really experience it because until you really put your feet on the ground and you can walk from the cloth hall to the various churches and really see it, you can't quite process how magical it really is.

So Krakow was one of the most important cities, not just in the kingdom of Poland, but of Europe in the 12th century. Beneath the great Varval Castle on the hill was a bustling merchant town. Its streets lined with workshops, market stalls and timber houses, connected to trade routes stretching across Central Europe and beyond. Outside that, there were suburbs and scattered settlements into the surrounding countryside. And it was this lower town, this commercial town, that would bear the brunt of the Mongol invasion when it arrived. And today we can get a sense of what that version of Krakov looked like, because beneath the cobbles of the main market square, where Ellen and I sat, there's a very curious museum, which preserves the remains of the original old city that were once buried beneath the modern street level after centuries of debris, flood and fire.

It was excavated between 2005 and 2010 during routine surface modernization of the main market square, and archaeologists uncovered medieval roads, market stalls, and a cemetery beneath the square. Now visitors can still see and walk alongside the original medieval Silk Road, see the foundations of shops and workshops, as well as the artefacts that give us a sense of what this powerful trading hub would have been like before the Mongol attack. Eleanor, I now see why I couldn't find you. We're standing on this amazing map, this kind of relief model map of Europe. Look, Krakov's in the middle. I mean, this is even allowing for a little local prejudice.

It does seem like a really important place. It absolutely is. Now, granted, Prague's there too. Of course. I thought you noticed. But it is really interesting because what it does show you are these major trade routes throughout Europe. And you can see up the top, we've got the North Sea and the Baltic trade route coming out of London. Yeah, it's a huge crossroads of medieval Europe.

And you can start to understand. I mean, the quality of the jewelry, the goods, the shoes that you can see that have been excavated here, this was a boom town. Oh, absolutely. And I think that's a really great way of putting it. It's this place that is expanding very, very quickly as a result of these incredibly advantageous conditions and as a result of the crown just pouring money into it. Good, good, so geography and then good governance? 100%. That's what it takes sometimes is it just takes investment.

Let's drag ourselves away from this map because we both like that. I love it. Because actually this is exciting to me. We've actually got evidence of a road system here. We've got the cobbles. Am I being a bit over romantic? But this is the silk rites. I mean, this is the literal silk road.

I'm going to touch it. Oh, I did it. But it is true because when you are building these roads, I think that there is this idea, there's a stereotypical idea that every single road in the Middle Ages is just this muddy pit. No, they have these well-engineered roads that can last centuries. These have survived.

They've been buried, right? But still, that architecture is in there. This is civic architecture that has been engineered and has managed to last. and it would have carried wagons all the way coming from Asia. These are the cobbles that horses would have trod upon. Merchants know you are going to be able to get in and out of town. There's going to be no hold up.

You can't underestimate how important there's infrastructure, I guess. Oh, that's absolutely the case. You know, time is money, and the actual traveling is the thing that really costs people. So that's why goods that come all the way from Asia are as expensive as they are, because maybe that's a really long way, right? So if you have to actually put this stuff on a camel or a horse, and you've got to walk it across Asia, then you're going to want to know

that these routes are as secure as possible. So that means that cobbled roads and things, that says you're open for business. You are a place that you can get into and out of easily. Frictionless trade, man. Now, there's another nice map of actually the city itself. You can hear the sound effects of this clack, the mandatory sound effects of a European museum,

the horse jangling. So we're looking at the map, very smartly laid out. Talk me through the town that springs up around that trade. What's the key elements of a town? Okay. We literally have a boring academic term for the key elements of a town. It's called a Criterion Bundel because it's Auf Deutsch. And one of the very big things that you need is a defensible series of walls.

Which is what you're going to see. That's number one because you need to be able to protect the town, protect trade. You need a marketplace where varying goods are sold and you need various centers of worship. So not just one church, you need churches, babe, right? And then also for something to be a city, you need an actual. cathedral. It is a technical term. If you are not the center of the church in the area, then you were not a city. You're just a town. The cathedral is the seat of a bishop. That's right. That's right. And so the bishop is running that locale from this cathedral. That's correct. Yeah. Okay.

And what about the different structure of society? Because we've got evidence over here of some of the slightly more simple dwellings, thatched roofs, made of wooden logs. Is that wealth being distributed through society? Are they all servicing this trade? Well, they are all servicing. Well, they are all this trade. I mean, city is going to include everybody, right? Because, yeah, you've got to merchants who are probably the top strata of society. They're the ones who are making all of the cash. And in cities, they are, you know, we use the term patrician, right? These are going to be the people who get elected mayor, stuff like that. But then, you know, who's going to make their shoes? You're going to have cobblers. Who is going to make horse shoes? You're going to have blacksmiths.

There's going to be all these people that have to serve the local economy. You know, someone's got to bake the bread, right? There are going to be bakers. And there is a lot of money to be made on those lower echelons as well. You live a pretty decent standard of life, actually. Because there's a blacksmith. There's a reconstruction of a Smithie over here. Those wagons, those horses are throwing shoes. Yep.

Each place like this, actually the merchant's going to be spending money. They need to keep the trade rolling. Now, I'm just going to trigger you here because I enjoy doing it. But obviously, from the Hollywood and the movies, the medieval period, it's muddy, it's gray, it's brown. There seems to be like a special filter they put on the front of the camera. What's your impression? What do you think life would have been like in Krakow?

Okay, so, I mean, let's be perfectly honest before we invent plumbing, if things are a little bit weirder, and it wouldn't be my personal choice to live in that situation. But we don't do that until the 19th century. So it's strange that we always treat the medieval period as uniquely weird and dirty. But fundamentally, it is not as gross as people say.

You know, there's that old myth that people would just take their chamber pots and throw them out the window and just say, look out below. I have no idea where that myth came from, but there are laws on the books about that. Just imagine, would you do that? Would you do that? You wouldn't. I mean, people are not monsters.

People understand what hygiene is. Nobody wants to be covered in poo, right? So there are plenty of laws about that. However, there are stuff like horses that are moving back and forth through the city all the time. So, yeah, manure is going to be more of a feature of your daily life. These are serious people who are thinking about sanitation, and you will have people who are called nightsoilmen that come and they will take away all of the sewage and take it out to the countryside on a regular basis. So there is basic sanitation happening all of the time.

It is not as good as a sanitation we have now, but nothing is, right? How would this compare to, say, London or York, do you think? I love the city of York, but it is just fundamentally true that Kukhov is larger. It's got a larger population. It's got a larger circuit of walls. And the other thing is that there is more coming in to Krakow than there is coming into York. The thing about Norwich, London, and York, are biggest cities in the medieval period in England, is they are mostly for getting goods out. Right.

It's more about taking wool and moving it out into the world. Krakow is a center. There's a lot more things going both ways, and that's the difference. And we can imagine the language is being spoken on these streets. Oh, yeah. It's just there's people coming in from northeast, south, and west. I would not be surprised to walk out on the streets of medieval Krakow and hear at least five languages.

Would that be reflected in the different kind of foods and drinks available here? Yeah, absolutely. So here you're going to have more hot options of what to eat. You know, I'll tell you what, medieval people, one of the big things that they do as a flex is they love to put spices in things. So they'll just be like, oh, it's got ginger,

it's got garlic, it's got paprika, it's got pepper, because one of the things that they're showing is I have access to all of these incredible spices. So they spice their food in this really outrageous way, Like our taste buds would be blown up by it. It's just absolutely crazy. We are going to see a pretty bread-heavy culture. That's certainly true.

What we're going with that? You get that really lovely rye bread. That is still a very important part of Central and Eastern European diets. Lots of meat. This is a known pork producing region, and they have really fine pigs, which is kind of like a big deal. In the medieval period, everybody likes to eat pork, right? But you're also going to have lots of fish that are coming in from the coast.

and crabs as well, that is something that gets shipped down very regularly. And, you know, it is one of those things. The big difference is going to be vegetables, right? A lot of the times when we think about vegetables now, you know, there's no such thing as a potato, there's no such thing as a tomato. All of these things have to come from the new world. So, you know, you're going to see a lot more cabbages. I love to see it, baby, and things of this nature.

But fundamentally, it is quite a sophisticated world of food. Actually, there's a bit I really want to show you over here because, of course, I do. there's a cemetery that they found as well. Which, it's not that surprising to see this in the middle of a city, because, well, you have to put your dead people somewhere, right? And there are lots of churches, which means there's lots of church yards,

and that means that you're going to find cemetery. So they found a lot of burials in this area. But of course, for me, because I like to get spooky with it, one of the things that I was really interested in is they found a bunch of what we would call deviant burials. Okay. So the normal burial that you would expect to find in a grave is somebody laying on their back

and they're going to have their arms crossed over their chest. But they found a bunch of burials, particularly of women, about six of them, who are buried on their side in a fetal position. And they are characterizing these, the word they are using is as vampire burials. So sometimes if someone was suspected that they may come back as, you know, we would use the word vampire,

Medieval people used to call them the Revenant dead. So, you know, you would kind of like get up out of your grave and then do something. Terrorizing living. Yeah. And then there would be these stories then that you go and then you dig up the grave of whoever did that. And you find that they're like, they've got a mouth full of blood and they're still looking very fresh. So in those cases, you would do different things to stop them from coming back out. Sometimes that would be decapitating them and putting their skull between their legs.

Sometimes it's putting a rock in their mouth. Things of this nature. But we have these 11th century burials where they are burying them in the... fetal position. Do we know exactly why? No, but we can guess that burying them in this way means that there was some worry that they were going to come back. And in particular, with these burials, we do find that they are in the fetal position, which could mean anything, but we know that it is probably a deviant burial. There's some worry about them being revenant because their hands are also bound with room. So how are you going to get out of this one, young lady, right? And this is

quite interesting for eight burials in the 11th century. You tend to see more of this in the early modern period, actually. If you said to me, oh, this is in the 17th century, I'd be like, oh yeah, absolutely, that happens all the time. 11th century, really unusual. Very cool. We're looking at a Christian burial, but it feels superstitious to me. There's little pegism surviving. Listen, Christians can have a little superstition as a treat, right? And so we do see that there are these ideas of what can happen with bodies. And certainly we see, for example monks write this down as well. So that isn't necessarily a barrier to having these superstitious thoughts. And you know indeed you're growing up in this world that is heavily

heavily religious, you're constantly being told bible stories and people are always trying to sort of map on what is happening in their lives with these particular religious and superstitious stories. So for example, when you have the Mongols attack, a lot of people think, oh well this must be a sign of the end times, right? This must be the end of the world. They identify the Mongols as well as as we call them, the hordes of Gog and Magog, who are supposed to be released during the apocalypse. And so if you are raised to expect the end of the world, you're raised to expect, yeah, people can come back from the dead.

When things start happening, it is a very human response to just sort of try to line those things up. On the horizon, invaders were coming. In 1234, the Mongols from the Eurasian steppe descended on Europe in a quest to dominate trade routes, forced tribute and expand their empire. Their armies left a wake of destruction. Survivors describe pyramids of skulls.

Horsemen appeared and disappeared at supernatural speed. Populations were massacred, towns annihilated. To the Christian Europeans, it seemed like the end of days. One of the most important Western European chroniclers of the Mongol invasions, Matthew Paris, described it, he calls them the Tartars, saying that these savage destructs, destroyers were a detestable nation of Satan. The first Mongol invasion, because there were several, began with the destruction of the cities in Rus, modern-day Ukraine, Belarus, and Western Russia.

In 1240, Kiev fell. The Rus' principalities were unable to withstand the speed of the Mongol cavalry, the precision of their mounted archery, the strict discipline that would prove unmatched time and again over the centuries, overwhelming these Europeans in the West to the Chinese and Korean. in the East. On 1241, they set their sights on Hungary and planned their advance through Poland. Their aim was to prevent the Poles helping the Hungarians dividing European resistance.

The Mongols moved with extraordinary speed on horseback, gathering intelligence, terrorising cities. Remember, at that point, Poland isn't one unified country. It's divided into Dutchies, meaning coordinated resistance is difficult. Anand, as the Mongols pushed further west, panic spread. reliable information became harder to get. Every retelling amplified the terror, which of course was a key tactic of the Mongols,

exemplary violence to head off future resistance. Many fled, leaving the path to Krakow relatively open. The people of Krakow had heard of the force barreling towards them. They knew what was coming. They'd heard of other towns and cities destroyed along the way. In March 1241, it was their turn. The Mongols arrived. Every hour on the hour, a trumpeter appears in the Tower of St. Mary's Basilica in central Krakow.

I'm standing in the shadow of that tower now, and you're about to hear that tune played. You'll play it four times facing in four different directions. There's the bell tolling. He's about to come out. There he is playing now, and the legend goes that a watchman standing high in this tower saw the Mongol army thundering towards the city and he began to play this tune to warn the townspeople and that raised the alarm, the whole point was to man the defences and close the gates.

But before he could finish the tune, a Mongol arrow struck him in the throat. The trumpet fell from the lips of the watchman. And look, you can just hear the trumpeter has stopped mid-tune. Maintain that tradition to keep it alive to remind us of that original watchman who was shot warning his fellow citizens that the Mongols were approaching.

Now, it's pretty hard to know how much this story is true. Whether that bugler, whether that watchman died sounding the alarm, sadly it remains a mystery, it remains a powerful myth. But it's a great example of how legend has come inseparable from the history of this period. Now, what we do know about this invasion is that, before the alarm was raised, before that bugle call, if you like. Thankfully, for the city dwellers,

they had had a warning of the approach to the Mongol army, and many of them had fled to nearby forests and swamps, fled into the countryside. Others fled up to the strongest, defended, the most fortified part of the city, which was Vaval Castle up on the hill. I'm approaching the walls of the castle now, and they are towering above me,

angled up from where I'm standing, a mass of red brick with battlements, crannulated turrets above me, watch towers on all the points. It's not just a castle. This is a sort of giant defence and administrative complex on this outcrop. And it's interesting because beyond the walls, there's big buildings, government buildings, ministry of buildings. There are the spires of religious buildings, a cathedral in fact. The royal apartments here, there's a palace. if the town square where I've come from is the commercial and social heart of the city, well up here is the religious, governmental and military stronghold, that is for sure.

It's clear that whoever commanded these walls, well, they were a man of immense status and power and importance. The high duke of Krakow was their king in his own domain. Just look at that massive tower ahead of me. now. It's enormous. I'm just imagining the medieval visitors who'd made their way through the muddy streets below, through the higgily-piggily houses, the hubbub of the commercial city, arriving up here, a more rarefied air, much grander architecture, a very different experience indeed. But I should point out that this is the result of centuries of building right up until the present

day. So in the 13th century high medieval period, it certainly didn't look like this, but just the position alone was spectacular and it would have been an amazingly imposing sight. It's very interesting. Just in one glimpse you can take in the Romanesque foundations of a building, the Gothic, the Baroque, the Renaissance, they're all packed in beside each other. It's just absolutely heavenly spot. So what I want to do is meet up with Yolanda Shalom. She's an archaeologist. She's going to help me to understand what was up here when the Mongols arrived, that key moment in the 13th century when this powerful fortress was able to withstand one of the most potent military formations that the world has ever seen.

Yolanta, how are you? I'm fine. Good to see you. Thank you for meeting me up here at the castle. Okay. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure for me, of course, to explain Polish history. I like learning.

We're standing in the heart of a huge castle that's been built up over centuries, spectacular. What did it look like when the Mongols set their eyes upon it? It was not so big like now, of course, yeah, because it was just one wing of the castle standing in the northern part, with the chapel adjoining. Yes, it looked like the small church at the time. And, of course, it was surrounded by walls with towers, yeah. So it had a moat, towers and a wall. Towers and wall, you know, just from the 10th century, from the time of reign of the first.

Polish king, right? Yeah. So this is a local stone, limestone. So the churches, the castles were usually built of the stone. I bet they're grateful they built them on a stone. Who was in the castle at the time? The time of invasion, you mean? Of course there were the rulers, the kings first of all, right?

And also the knights, but they're quite often absent, yeah? Because usually the Polish kings, you know, in the early Middle Ages invaded neighboring countries. So usually women, you know, so stay in the castles and they try to organize, you know, the life. Of course, there were some tournaments, yes, we know, on the codyards, because codyards were of the castle, as were always used for tournaments of nights, organized on the occasions of coronations, weddings, you know, special kind of events. And of course, I think that the ladies like dancing, you know, so we know that they, you know, that they, you know, so often. We know that the Polish queens here so like riding on the horses.

They like jewelry, like usually, you know, women like. And we know that jewelry was very, very beautiful at the time, made of gold because there's a royal coat, so everything was made of gold, I mean rings, pendants, yeah, and decorated in light of many jewels, of course, like pearls, here for example. We can say that because some artifacts were fun at the time of the excavations. Was the garrison ready for the Mongols? Yes, I think so, yeah, because ladies, you know, they organized also the defense of the castle, right? So I think that they were very, very, very brave at the time and they could do everything. what men do.

That's not unusual in the medieval period. Lots of famous English sieges that women had to take the lead as well. So we're standing up in the castle now. We'd have been able to look down and see the Mongols' approach and did they just destroy the town below us? Why did the Mongols not try to attack this castle?

How was the castle able to defend itself on that first invasion? I think that it is defended first of all by Oku, this small area, well fortified, and from the other side by Viswa River. So Wavr, it's a very old name. So Wavl, it means at kind of the very high place, like hill, well defended. Yeah, yeah, and as you know, it's a limestone rock.

We're standing on top of big limestone rock, the river's below us. Did they try and break into the castle or did they just take a look at it and think they didn't want to try? Yeah. They just didn't even. Yeah, exactly. So they're going for the easy targets. Yes. And do we know how long the Mongols were here the first time? We had 10 days.

10 days. In Krakow only. In Poland, I think, one month, even longer. Did the people of Krakow, do you think they flee? Did they come up here to the castle? Did they know the Mongols were coming? Yes, they know that, yeah, because they captured some towns in the West of Poland, like Lublin, for example, like Sondomish.

Yes, that's a very, quite big towns at the time. in the early Middle Ages. And they knew that the Mongols will come to Krakow. And they took everything what is possible to take. And yes, escaped because the worst was that the Tatars come here to take the slaves. We had that even about 30,000 young, you know, the USO boys and girls were taken at the time of the first invasion.

So people really were afraid, you know. So the roads would have been clogged with refugees trying to escape. Yeah, yeah, exactly. People hiding in the woods. Yeah. This is very terribly in Europe. All people, you know, were afraid of Mongols because there's something different, you know. Yeah, but the city was completely burned almost.

Everything was in the ashes. Right. Ruins completely, yeah. So burned everything, yeah, except some stone churches. and the Wavall Hill. On the 31st of March, if you've been standing on these battlements, you'd have looked down and you'd have seen the lower settlements, the houses, the workshops, the everyday buildings, a light.

Nearly all made of word they were burned to their foundations. It would have been an apocalyptic scene. A fast-moving military campaign, like that fought by the Mongols, usually doesn't leave much in the way of archaeology behind it, But very excitingly here at Krakow, they have evidence, archaeological evidence, for that moment of destruction. And it's in the Rheinik Museum and Elnert Janegar is down now. Now, Eleanor, this is, for me, very interesting, exciting, because there's archaeology here that takes us back to a split second, a moment in time. And we've got that example in, people that have got a clue because they can hear the sound effects here.

We've got fires burning. What's going on in front of us? So this would be the devastation that was brought down on the city during the Mongol attacks. And one of the things that we know they do is they burn a lot of the extant structures. This is common Mongol behavior if you say that you're not going to be amalgamated. You've got basically two options, right? The Mongols show up at the door and they say, hello, join our trade empire. And you can say, yes, sure, thank you, Mr. Mongol, and things will be fine.

And if you say, no, they are going to burn your city. That is going to happen. And in this case, a lot of the buildings were wooden, so that is entirely possible. But we have this great archaeological record of these charred wooden remains, and that is extremely interesting. Yeah, it's so fascinating. So this potentially takes us back to that day in the spring of 1241, when the Mongol army scalloped through here.

Interestingly, they haven't found many human remains. So we do know that some people are able to hide out in churches, and they do survive. but a lot of people are taken prisoner and they will be sold on. You know, we see this all the time in the medieval period, in the early modern period. This is one of those things. If Vikings attack, a lot of the time, they're going to take you along with them. So that is one of the things that people are really frightened of. So this is exciting because like you, I've spent a lot of time talking and thinking about the Mongol invasions,

but I think I've ever seen much archaeological evidence for them. And yet here we have these extraordinary arrowheads. Yeah, this is really cool because I think you, like me, when you imagine the Mongols, the thing that I'm imagining them doing is being on their horse leaning off and using their arrows. That is the image that lives rent-free in my head. And so it's so neat to actually see these arrowheads as evidence that survive.

And if they have survived this long, if they have survived 800 years, imagine how many there must have been around the shop for us to be able to find them. Because, you know, medieval people are pretty thrifty. If you found something like this, you would often reuse. You can use it, you melt it back down, you might use it for your own arrows. So that just shows us there were so many that some could get lost along the way.

So this Mongol invasion of Poland was sort of like a lightning war, wasn't it? They just might gallop straight through here, destroying settlements. For the people involved in society after that, did it leave a big imprint? Is this a really hugely important moment? Oh, absolutely. This is a big psychological moment. It's existential for the people living in Europe. You know, they consider themselves not as Europeans, but as Christians, and they refer to where they are

living as christenedum. So it does feel to them that these pagans, that's their word, that you know, they don't really understand the concept of, you know, Vajrana Buddhism so much. So they're just like, this is some kind of a pagan, right? And so they say, okay, well, we are being attacked by these outside forces. And that's what helps them put this sort of apocalyptic

narrative on top of it. We certainly know the papacy is freaked out about this. You know, they're writing letters left, right, and center. They're trying to gather up big armies to come and face down the Mongols. and nobody really wants to do it, because they're really frightened of it. So there is kind of rather a lot of dithering,

and we never see a huge pan-European clash with the Mongols as a result of the fact that everyone is frightened. So it's kind of just like the Poles, the Hungarians and the Czechs out there on their own seeing off these guys. And I suppose you see when this city is rebuilt. There's a big set of fortifications around it,

so that Mongol invasion leaves an imprint in the architecture. Absolutely. So we get to see this really interesting and wonderful snapshot here. And that is rare. This is why we are underground right now, because if you burn down a bunch of houses, you're going to have this layer of ash,

you're going to have this layer of kind of stone. You just build on top of that. You just build on top. Yeah, go for it. So that's why the modern street level is kind of two or three meters above us, I suppose. Now, obviously, it was terrible for the people who had to live through this burning.

But from a historical standpoint, it's one of the things that really helps it become the city that it does. Interesting. Krakoff wasn't the end goal of their campaign. Their long-term plan required them to keep moving on swiftly. They continued west where they got Silesia, where they engaged in probably the most famous battle of this campaign, the Battle of Lengthia, where the Great King Henry, the Pius, was killed.

He was leading a coalition of punishment of other European forces in an attempt to protect the region. But it was an astonishing Mongol victory. The European knights were utterly, utterly outmaneuvered and outclassed. And his death is still remembered as a great tragedy in Polish history. In the years after, Krakow tried to re-establish itself. Those who fled slowly returned, churches were repaired, and trade tentatively resumed. But this was really a period of survival, edging back towards normality.

Meanwhile, over in Hungary, the Mongols who had spent months rampaging across Bruce, Poland, and the Hungarian plains, largely uncontested, destroying armies and burning settlements on their way, perhaps to Western Europe. Well, suddenly they came to a halt. And that's because in December 1241, something catastrophic happened. The great Khan died. The central figure who held together the empire was gone, and the Mongols were left facing a succession crisis. So their generals, their princes, their commanders in Europe had to return home to deal with it.

They turned back. They pulled out of Central Europe, back through the Balkans towards the step. The Europeans were stunned. There was no heroic Christian victory. The Mongols simply left. Now historians also suggest there are probably other contributing factors, of course. The further west they got, the more challenging the terrain would have got. Western Europe was heavily forested in that time. Large-scale cavalry warfare was different. This was a new ecosystem for them to master. And sustaining such a large-scale, large force of horses and men so deep into Europe would have become harder and harder as they moved further from their familiar lands and plants and animals. Either way, though, they went

and Europe breathed a sigh of relief, at least for the time being. I'm right in the heart of Krakow at the moment, and I'm in the shadow of some very impressive buildings, particularly the town hall, which is a huge clocked hour with domes on top and a crown right up by the weather vane, and it is a magnificent building. And all of these buildings, body the next chapter in the history of this remarkable city. And during the sacking of Krakoff, that traumatic event, high up in the castle, the boy Duke watched as the Mongols ransacked his town below. He was 15 years old, and he would be known to history as Boris after chased.

And at 15 he was too small to do much about this rampaging Mongol army that was sacking his patrimony. He was literally could do to stop the carnage. But in the years that followed the invasion, he sort of made up for a bit because he led the city, led this community in an astonishing rebuilding project. He grew up and by 1257, he was a young man, who was in the prime of life and he was ready to be the leader that Krakoff needed. Because both he and this city were standing on the precipice of a new era. And that newer is the one that gives us the remarkable building projects that I'm surrounded by now. And in fact, I've got right in the middle of town,

we've got the cloth hole. More on that in a second. How's it going? Hey, Dan. Are you in your happy place? I literally am. I am so excited to see the cloth hole today. This is a building so important that in my days

as a medieval history undergrad, I had to learn about it. Can we talk about Borisov, the chased? I don't know why I'm laughing. But it's a particular kind of trauma watching your community kind of wiped out. Whilst knowing that you're the titular head and being too young, too small,

to learn about it, you must feel so insecure. Well, I mean, it is one of these things where he really seems to be able to turn straw into gold in this case, right? Because, yeah, clearly he realizes that this isn't going to be good enough and something needs to fundamentally change in Krakow. And for him, one of the biggest things that he changes is the city walls. You know, like he really, really sees to it. The town is fortified. And listen, that's kind of like medieval cities 101. And he realizes that one of the things is going to drag the city into being is if he can encourage train.

If he can encourage people to say this is a safe place, then he's going to be onto a winner. The geography means that the great trade routes will pass through here. Absolutely. And if he can provide a sort of safe place for that exchange, for those merchants, that's half the battle. Like 100%. Listen, he does specific things like establishes the city charter that makes Krakow a city. You know, it was a kind of looser collection of buildings. I'm not saying it wasn't an important place.

But when you get the city charter, what that does is it says, there are certain rights for citizens of Krakow. There's going to be certain favorable taxation rates if you move in. And so suddenly, all the people who are kind of around in the area who might have been thinking they would live in this town or that town, they're going to come into Krakov if they've got the ability to do so because they know that they can get a business off the ground. Now, that sounds quite far-sighted, is it?

I mean, because it sounds like he's almost, giving up a little bit of his own power. If he's allowing the townspeople to self-govern to a certain extent, some autonomy? Oh, completely. So what he's doing is he's trading some direct power in Krakow for taxation revenue. But taxation revenue is going to be absolutely necessary if the specific thing you want to do is build new city walls, improve roads that have been burnt down. You know, he's got a bunch of churches to remake.

So it's walls, it's churches, and then it's provided, well, literally a space for commerce, for trade, for wealth courage. Absolutely, and that is the wonderful cloth hall. The cloth hall of Krakoff is said to be Europe's oldest shopping mall, and it has been for centuries an emporium of trade and consumerism. And this is just, it's very difficult to overstate how incredibly important and also unusual this building is in a medieval perspective. Yeah, you do have other big halls and things that exist in the Middle Ages, but usually not for commerce in this same way. A covered market is unusual. It's got a beautiful vaulted ceiling. There are still wooden stalls all the way down,

selling a range of fascinating objects. There are some touristy shops selling fridge magnets, but there are also real shops. There's some craftwork. There's some carved wood. There's some glass, a lot of jewelry. So it still feels like maybe. a little bit like it would have been like. Absolutely. One of the things I'm most delighted to see here is a lot of amber. And that's one of those Baltic trade goods

that medieval people were really into. And I love seeing that that is still traded in these same spaces because, listen, I would expect to be able to show up here, even though it's called the cloth all, right? I would expect to be able to get amber here because it is a destination for luxury goods, right? So cloth is one of those really important luxury goods and Krakhov's got that.

The other thing that Krakow has a lot of is salt. And that seems like a little bit of a boring commodity now, but salt is so important in a world without refrigerators, right? Because that's one of the only ways that people have to preserve food. And so they're using actually huge quantities of salt all the time. And so having access to good quality salt is a really big deal at the time. And the salt that they are mining here in Krakow is incredibly high quality. I've come just outside Krakow now and I've arrived at a handsome building.

There's a lift tower which gives you a bit of a hint as to what lies beneath here because this is a salt mine, not typically one of the great sites to go and visit when you're doing some historical travel at certain destinations. But trust me, in this region of Poland, it certainly is. This is the Velichka salt mine and I've read about it. I've seen pictures but I can't actually believe what is down there. Luckily, I don't have to believe. I'm about to see.

I'm about to be taken down by Michael. How are you, bud? Great, how are you? Yep, good. You're going to guide me around. That's right. What can I expect? I'll tell you this in the best way that I can. Prepare to get your mind blown, because what you're about to see will absolutely knock your socks off.

This is one of the most beautiful, most iconic places that we have here, especially in the southern part of Poland. It's a mine of salt. Of course, salt was a very important mineral in our history. And you're about to see a lot of very interesting things that we did with the salt, including art and other things. spoilers. And they've been mining here since the medieval period. Just give you a sense of how big, how deep is it, how much are it covered? Well, keeping in mind that things started here around the middle of the 13th century, the mine today reaches about four and a half kilometers north-south, six and a half kilometers east-west, and it reaches a final depth of 327 meters underground. It's

an absolutely massive scale. That's a lot of salt. That is. And if you can believe it, there's still plenty to go around if we were to pick up mining again. All right, Dan. Follow me. Whoa, this is an enormous chamber now. This is the size of an underground car park. Why is there so much salt on it? What on earth is going on? Well, about 13.6 million years ago, if you came to what is now Villichka, you would have found a very big body of water here called the Miocin Sea. And the sea evaporated as time went on, and that's what left behind those crystallized deposits of salt. Now, as time went on, the geological movements which formed the Carpathian Mountains crushed that deposit up into smaller pieces.

As you could see, some of them were in fact quite large. And about 6,000 years ago, this would have been the Neolithic period, the first settlers came. And they found large salt lakes here back then, which basically they used to boil salt out of. So the lakes, you could see, were puddles from the mice and sea. They would take the water, set it on a special fireplace, the water would evaporate, and they had salt crystals. That was very, very handy because they could use the salt to preserve things like meat, and they started to use it as an early form of money, which is why today we have a very famous term for getting paid.

What do you call your paycheck? Your salary. Exactly. And the prefix sal means... Salt? There you go. Wow. So it's always been one of the most important commodities.

It was an integral part of life. When did they start mining salt down there? Well, it was somewhere around the middle of the 13th century. So let's take those early decades. How big was the mine? I mean, it was... Very tiny back then. And that's... There's a couple of reasons why, mainly the technological aspect. Of course, we didn't have as many tools as we did in the later years. So the mine back then would have been just a couple of corridors and just at the first level of the mine. So only about 64 meters deep. Are they just using pickaxes to get out of the ground? Back then, they would have used kind of very tiny and very small pickaxes to scrape the salt from the walls. That would have been one way.

The method of producing the salt cylinders also would have been present a little bit later in the years. So basically those were the two forms of mining salt back then. But it wasn't something difficult. Salt is a very brittle material on the Mo scale, which describes the hardness of rock from 1 to 10. Salt only falls at about two, two and a half category. It's very brittle. And it also hates moisture, which also gives us many different ways of mining salt, which kind of appeared in the later centuries. And was it dangerous for those early miners?

I've said digging into the earth. Are there explosive gases? are the collapses. So back in the day, I would say the biggest cause of death here in the mine would have been explosions of methane, a very prominent gas that we had here. And this gas would release itself into the mine's atmosphere during every single extraction. The gas forms from the decomposition of organic matter. So as you can imagine, when that Miocene C evaporated, all those living creatures got trapped in the salt.

So that gas had little pockets which were located within the salt deposits. And the miners, as they picked away, would release this thing. The biggest problem we have with it is that methane has no color, no taste, no smell, and it doesn't hurt you when you ingest it. But over the years, plenty of people would have perished down here. Well, we don't really have exact numbers, but yes, in the beginnings the mine was a dangerous place, and that really is one of the reasons why our miners became such religious people and why in the undergrounds today we are going to be traveling through so many different underground chapels.

The miners would pray for safety, so they would always return home. And were they enslaved people, they prisoners? Were they the criminal class that were forced to work down here? Not at all. In fact, the miners themselves were a very small group of only the most trusted people for the king. The first kind of group of miners, there was only about 100 of them. These were people that were acquainted with the king. The king knew that he could trust them, and he also rewarded them for their work very adequately.

In the medieval period, why was it so valuable? Well, salt back in the day was a mineral which was very difficult to attain. Nowadays, we could take water from the ocean and essentially go through a very meticulous, pressurized boiling process and get salt. But back then, you needed to boil many hundreds of liters just to produce a very tiny amount of salt. So that is why when the people found salt deposits, large concentrations of salt all in one area, they knew that this was something that they could sell, they could trade with this, and, well, it was always in demand, basically all of Europe required salt.

Okay. So we're walking along a tight corridor. I can see we're coming out to a bigger space. So how far down are we now? Right now, 101 meters. Okay, we've broken through the 100 meter mark. This is my favorite place in the Vietroca mine. Well, I've never seen anything like this.

Okay, so folks, you've got to imagine an aircraft hangar at size. I'm not exaggerate. And was this one enormous block of salt? What's going on here? It was, and in fact, it took many, many years for the miners to get rid of that salt block in the first place. And only after that did the actual construction of the chapel begin. Listeners, I'm going to tell you this is like it.

So it's a gigantic underground cavern hollowed out in a salt mine but which looks like the interior of a cathedral. And we've got moments of Jesus' life on the walls. There they are. That's Jesus' little baby. Escaping from King Herod. We have got the mirror.

We've got the water into wine over there. We've got the last supper. The last supper is beautiful. Based on of Leonardo da Vinci's painting. Exactly. They're carved into the walls. And then we've got a giant high altar. We've got a pulpit. every single thing carved out of salt. It's actually almost left me speechless. There's huge chandeliers which are extraordinary as well.

And take a little bit of a closer look at them because you'll see that those little beads that you see wrapped around the strings are actually pieces of salt. No, they're not. Yeah, in fact, that's the purest form of salt that you could extract naturally. They look like glass. I mean, that's extraordinary. Each one is about 99.8% sodium chloride. So you really can't find anything better than this.

And every crystal came from... from a crystal cave, a rare geological formation. And since we can't enter the caves anymore because they're a restricted area, basically this is the only place where we could view them from up close. That is one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen, I think.

So this is 19th century? When's this? Actually, 1862, so second half of the 19th century. And are there services held down here? Actually, every Sunday at 7.30 a.m., we have a mass here, open to everybody. I'll tell you what, I bet the singing's out of control. It's absolutely magical. Why do they go to this trouble? What's going on now?

So basically since this place opened up the miners, who were already very close to God. And in the later years, as the place grew bigger, more and more of these chapels appeared. And at one point in our history, we had over 60 active chapels. What? Exactly, right here in the undergrounds. Sheepers. And is this the biggest chapel?

That's right. This is the chapel of St. Kinga. So one of the things that you guys should know is that in the year 1241, the Mongols didn't just burn crack out to the ground. They also went through Villituka. And, well, Villichka was a very important and prominent place on the map, even back then, due to its famousness for the producing of salt. And this very nicely ties into the legend of Kinga as well, because after Villichka was burned to the ground and the miners were left with absolutely nothing,

they seeked help from the ruling elite, of course, there in the country. And Kinga and Boloswaf, so this was Boloswaf, the Bash. Okay, Boroslav, the Chaste. Okay, Boroslav, the Chaste, I see. He's the young boy who was. watches the Mongols destroy Krakow. That's right. So they really stepped up because they decided that everything found underground belonged to royalty

and should be distributed equally. Therefore, there was no longer kind of private mine shafts. All of it was one big mine in one big enterprise. And this later led to the very big expanse that it became, the Krakow Saltberg's enterprise, and that provided all the money necessary to both restore and expand Krakow. So it's interesting, again, we see that Mongol destruction was a period of reorganization and in some ways a springboard for future development. That's right, you know, they always say that when one door closes another opens,

so that was the case here. By the early 14th century, Krakow was flourishing economically, but Poland was still fragmented, divided among rival piazsche dukes all vying for power. Eventually, enough nobles and the church agreed that Poland could be stronger as one unified kingdom. So they turned to Wadisthav-Workyzeck. That's not, I think, how the Poles-Pronauts pronounce out. I'll apologize for that. He was known little cruelly by his peers as the elbow high.

So in 1320, this OG short king, Wadiswaffe, was crowned in Vaval Cathedral, and Krakow became the royal capital. 13 years later, upon his death, his son took over, and Krakov grew even more successful under a ruler who really did earn his title, Kazimir the Great. Across the 14th century, Kazimir's fortifying the castle, building the city up in stone, expands trade, strengthens the law, and founds the prestigious Yagallonian University. Under his rule, Krakow was transformed from a city recovering from invasion to one of the great political, commercial, intellectual capitals of Central Europe.

And when Kazimir died, waiting in the wings to help the rest of Poland rise up to the same heights was the teenage Yadwiga, who was crowned king of Poland in 1384. She ushered in a new era of Polish wealth and power. whole other podcast, but I couldn't do one about medieval poem without mentioning her. In this fairy tale city, it's often hard to separate the legend from the facts, the myth from the reality, that the two have become entwined in the story of Krakow, but both are important, they're valuable, to understand the heart of this place and how it tells its own history. And there's one legend that really embodies that. I'm going to leave you with it. Right now, I'm under Vaval Castle

in a dark and dripping cavern. Now supposedly this is where the dragon of Krakow lived. Today, the symbol of the city. And the story goes like this. Long ago, the varval dragon terrorized King Krak's city. Each day the evil dragon would beat a path of destruction across the countryside, kill civilians and pillage homes and devour livestock. Some versions of the story say that the beast required ransoms of cattle,

others that it devoured only virgins. Either way, the townspeople had to appease the beast as best they could, and it seemed that no knight on his horse could vanquish it. Then one day, a simple young shoemaker's apprentice stepped forward. He believed he could outsmart the dragon. He took a ram's hide and stuffed it with sulphur and pitch. He put this fake ram in front of the dragon's den. The dragon took the bait immediately, devoured the ram down.

and immediately felt a burning in its throat. To quench its terrible thirst, the dragon tried to drink the Vistula River, but water cannot extinguish burning sulphur. The chemicals, the gases built up inside the dragon until it exploded. The dragon was slain. It would terrorise the countryside no more. The townsfolk celebrated the heroic shoemaker was rewarded with the princess's hand in marriage.

And the local king ordered that a castle be built above the lair, the place where I am emerging from now. And that castle became the first building of what would evolve into one of the most magnificent medieval cities in Europe. Crack off. Ah, I'm just coming out into the sunlight now. To all the banks of the Vistula, this beautiful river, the sun is shining. And we know that medieval people used myths to tell stories

about where they came from. So make sense of real catastrophes. The dragons of those stories represented chaos and destruction and the fear of what lay beyond civilization. I'm very struck by the fact this story talks about Krakow growing out of this era of destruction when the land was preyed upon by a terrible monster. Well, I think the parallels with the Mongol invasions are hard to miss. In myth and reality, Krakov had seen off an existential threat and emerged resplendent. And actually that's a pattern that we see throughout Krakhov's history,

the brutal 20th century, where this city has survived everything that humanity can throw at it, and remains today one of Europe's finest medieval cities. Well, folks, thank you so much for joining me on this tale of medieval Krakow. If you want to learn more about any of the places we've visited or book your own historic adventure to Krakoff, just head to www.visit Malapolska.pl for more information. We'll add that link to the show notes. Huge thank you to the Malpalska Tourism Organisation and the Polish Tourism Organisation. And if you're enjoying a bit of armchair travel, then hit following your podcast player, as we'll be bringing you plenty more world history this summer.

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