The Rest Is History - 270: Poland: Copernicus, the Dragon and the Salt Mine

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

Join Tom and Dominic as they explore the seven wonders of Poland. Hear all about Krakus the dragon-slayer, the Wieliczka Salt Mine, "Kaiser soup", the influence of Oriental fashion, and much more... Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory. tour of uh the world's 32 most successful footballing nations today dominic we are arriving in poland we are and tour is the right word tom because we will be doing something of a tour in this um episode because i thought we should do something completely different which we haven't done before. So you know the seven wonders of the

ancient world? I do, yeah. Can you name all seven? Well it's complicated because they vary. They do. So the commonly acknowledged ones are the Statue of Zeus at Olympia the Hangar of Babylon and sometimes the Walls of Babylon. Yes.

And sometimes the walls of Babylon. Oh, I don't have them on my list. So sometimes they're included. The Mausoleum in Halicarnassus, the Pharos in Alexandria. Yes, yes, the lighthouse, exactly. The Great Pyramid, which is the only surviving one. How many have I done so far? I can't remember.

You've done six. I think you've got one to go. Oh, no, you've got two to go only you've got two to go do you want to put your misery the colossus of roads colossus roads yes and what was the temple of artemis oh yes at ephesus at ephesus yeah so they were supposedly that comes from somebody called antipater of sidon in the second century we've got to do an episode on them we yeah it'd be a brilliant episode yeah it's it's a real the whole backstory to it's so interesting but far distant from poland it is far distant from poland but of course ever since people have you know people have said what are the seven wonders of the modern world what are the seven wonders of britain all this sort of stuff and in the year 2007 the polish newspaper resh poshpolita named as you will know Tom from Reszpublika

yes the Latin for Republic right exactly and named after the official name of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

a subject that we've often talked about doing on the rest of history and still haven't done but we will and we haven't done so the Polish newspaper

Reszposzpolita which is I guess Poland's kind of newspaper record so it's a bit like le monde or the or the daily mail exactly not the daily house and uh they had they had a competition and uh they had hundreds of entries and experts whittled them down and the public voted and i thought it would be fun to talk about the seven wonders of poland as voted for by the polls and what they tell us about history so we shall just crack on start with number seven okay dominic before we do this i

have to put my hands up and say i have never been to poland oh but it is very high on my list of places to visit so i suspecting that this will absolutely confirm me in that it definitely will because i think this this this podcast is not sponsored by the Polish Tourist Board. It absolutely should be. But if they're listening, and they'd like to make a contribution. They should make a contribution. We wouldn't say no, would we? We wouldn't say no.

So we'll start off in, I suppose, the city that most people naturally gravitate to in Poland, which is not Warsaw, the capital, it's the city of krakow so krakow beautiful city not unlike prague um in its in its appearance like all great cities it has a legend so krakow was established on in a place called weibel hill and the story goes that it had a mythical ruler called krakus who who built the city above a cave that was occupied by a dragon called Smok Vavelski. Lots of knights tried to kill this dragon and failed, but Cracus, who's culling and he was also culinary-minded,

he poisoned a lamb and gave it to the dragon, and the dragon ate it and died. So that was great news for him and for the Poles generally. I think that's slightly cheating. Well, i mean oh it did work but but i mean it's it's an oddly unheroic way to kill a dragon what i'm going to say to you is like getting rid of a rat or something krakus has a wonder of poland named after him and you do not well yeah but i don't think i have to i don't think i have to have killed a dragon to to criticize someone for their lack of dragon kid dragon killing i think you do i think if you haven't no that's ridiculous i think if you haven't walked the walk as as

dragon slayers say dominic that's like saying unless you've been a premier football manager you can't criticize them well that's what premier league football yeah i know they do say well anyway listen whatever that's what dragon sl football yeah i know they do say well anyway listen whatever that's what dragon slayer say let's get back to krakow so it's around

krakow in what's the area known as wilko polska that the the tribe of the polands so the poles um set up this sort of predecessor of the

polish state in about the 10th century uh it's in the 10th century that we have the first name, the appearance of the name Krakow, from a Sephardic Jewish traveler. The 10th, probably the 11th century, it becomes the seat of the Polish government.

It's almost destroyed by the Mongols. But then it becomes a member of the Hanseatic league um krakow so it has guilds and it has libraries and townhouses thin houses exactly yeah and the thing is in the west for so many years people of our generation we grew up having internalized the iron curtain and thinking of this kind of this this fixed division between eastern and western europe and the study of of Poland and this story of the Seven Wonders of Poland completely turns all that on its head because it's impossible to make any sense unless you realize how much Poland was integrated in that world of the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Germany,

and so on and so forth. And you see that in this great, this fantastic public space in the center of Krakow, which is the Wander. That is the Wander, is it? Which is the main square of Krakow. It's the largest medieval square in Europe. It's called the Rinek Gwovni. It was built after the Mongol invasion. So we're talking about sort of 14th century.

Most of the buildings surrounding the the square are newer by now you know they've been replaced by 17th and 18th century buildings but there are two buildings in particular that are that are worthy of note so one is the the tower of the town hall a fantastic gothic building it's the only bit of the medieval town hall that's left it's made of so many of the buildings are in poland that made a brick so it's kind of gothic brick which is unusual you know you you see that in the low countries you might see that in denmark or somewhere but you don't really see it you know you obviously don't see it in spain or italy or whatever and and one of the things about krakow yeah and i guess this this great square is that it's it's one of the things about Krakow, and I guess this great square, is that it's one of the few cultural centres in Poland

that is not devastated in the Second World War. Is that right? Yes. Well, we'll come to a couple of others, actually, later in this list. But you're right. For the survival of wonders. So only one survivor of the seven wonders of the ancient world, they're all gone.

But Poland suffered so grievously in the Second World War that the very existence of these is a wonder in itself. Is a wonder in itself. Agreed, completely agreed. So the Town Hall Tower, but even more impressive, actually, is the Cloth Hall. I love a Cloth Hall. You love a Cloth Hall.

Nothing is more Hanseatic League than a Cloth Hall. Exactly, exactly the point. So the Cloth Hall, for those of you who don't know, so Krakow was situated, it was a perfect place for trade because people could come from Kiev and Rus', they could come from Lithuania and the Baltic, they could come from Hungary and Germany, they could come from the North Sea into the Baltic and then down the rivers and so on. And they would sell their wares in this market square. And the cloth hall was a huge part of that.

And it's originally a medieval building, but then it was remodeled in Renaissance fashion. So nobody thinks of Poland when it comes to the Renaissance, at least nobody in Britain. Copernicus, I suppose. Well, Copernicus may feature, Tom. Oh, very exciting. I know you like a bit of science. I do. Especially a bit of science. I do. Especially a bit of Renaissance science.

So the Cloth Hall is now the spectacular red and white Renaissance building. It's colonnaded. It's used as an art gallery. And out from it and from the square, there's this kind of grid of Renaissance and kind of Baroque era streets. So Tom, actually, you would love it. You should definitely go to Krakow. I've got to go yeah

yeah now crockoff fell from i mean perhaps you could argue one reason it's so well preserved he says actually slightly fell from prominence at the end of the 16th century in 1596 yeah so kind of like bruges or ghent or exactly so a new king sigismund vasa he was king of poland i mean incredible he was king of poland lithuania sweden and finland very impressive for a man who most of our listeners i'm guessing will probably not have heard of and he relocates the capital to warsaw makes much more sense uh because it's going to be it's more central within his vast kingdom with his vast kingdom exactly and the other interesting thing about crock of course is very jewish so before World War II, it had about 90 synagogues

and maybe as much as a third of its population was Jewish. And of course, the overwhelming majority of them were destroyed by the Nazis and the Holocaust. That's where Schindler recruited people from his factories. Right, Schindler's List is set, exactly. Polanski was in the ghetto there, Roman Polanski. And do you know what? Polanski will also be returning.

Roman Polanski and his family will also be returning. I'm jumping the gun. No, no, it's great that you're setting up all kinds of threads that we should follow through the story. So the Krakow Main Square is our first wonder. Now, you were talking about places that were perfectly preserved and not destroyed in the Second World War, and that is true of number two on the list.

So number two is a town called Zamość. So have you ever heard of Zamość, Tom? No, I haven't. So it's in the far east of Poland. So it's very close to the Ukrainian border. It is a unique example of a perfectly preserved, planned Renaissance town. So again, this Renaissance quality.

It's another brilliant example of how the idea of a distinction between Western and Eastern Europe is meaningless. Because it's basically an Italianate town in the far east of uh poland so so what's it doing there well now we have to sort of leap a bit further forward in time from the sort of medieval period so in the 16th century poland was part of the polish lithuanian commonwealth the biggest state in europe this absolutely sort of sprawling beast with colossal diversity religious cultural ethnic diversity one of the things they held together was the political elite, who called themselves the Slashta. So they were the kind of nobility.

And they had two very strange things about them by the standards of the 16th century. The first was they were devotees of something called Sarmatianism. So they believed they were descended from the psalmations the iranian steppe masters of the slavs yes and were they i guess they weren't no but they dressed as psalmations so they wore cosplay orientalist clothing they had they sort of put on turbans they wore jewel dag daggers, all this kind of thing. What fun.

So if you'd gone to Poland and gone to meet the nobility in the era of the Renaissance... You'd think you were in Sarmatia. Yeah. Or indeed, you'd think you were in some sort of Indiana Jones or James Bond film of the worst orientalizing kind

with people with scimitars and stuff and colossal mustaches but who were clearly just dressing up yeah um so there's that and the other thing they're obsessed with not unlike you tom is ancient rome so as well as doing all this they also have their hair cut like ancient rome now that's slightly it's a bit of a yeah it's difficult to do that when you're carrying off a jeweled scimitar, but they do it. Okay, so I can understand dressing like a Roman. I can understand dressing like a, you know, a barbarian of the steppes.

Yeah. To do both. Why not do both? Why not do both? Well, I suppose, yeah, it's incredible. I mean, if you're a Polish nobleman, you can. You have the money. I suppose that's true. The Renaissance obviously explains why they're so interested in ancient Rome.

Yeah, because that's the standard. I mean are aping rome throughout european history but the psalmations i think it's their location it's their location probably you could argue at the end of the great eurasian step yes would you not say i mean that there's some elements of that that they see themselves because of course their territory if they're ruling the polish lithuanian commonwealth their territory covers modern-day Belarus, Western Ukraine, and so on, much of Ukraine, in fact. So they're not that far away from step-nomads, and they want to see themselves as the kind of...

As both. Yes, exactly. A bridge between two worlds, Dominic. Very nice. Poland, land of contrasts. And if the Polish tourist board want to get in touch as i say yeah don't don't hesitate so they um so they will always if you have if you're an educated young man you will travel to italy you'll go to venice or particularly to padua padua is a hugely popular destination for young Poles in the 16th century.

Is there any particular reason for that? I think it's that classic thing of a kind of critical mass. Yeah. Lots go and then more do go. So in the mid to late 16th century, an astonishing statistic, one in four students at the University of Padua is Polish. Wow. And they come back home and they build Italian Renaissance palaces

and churches and country houses and things. But there's a guy called Jan Zamoyski, and he goes one better. So he is your classic kind of senator's son from Poland, born in 1542. He's gone to the Sorbonne. He's gone to the University of Strasbourg. He's gone, of course, to Padua, where he gets a law doctorate in 1564. He writes, Tom, very much a man after your heart, he writes a brochure, a little brochure called De Senatu Romanu,

about ancient Roman government and how it worked. He comes back home. He becomes Chancellor of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He has all signs of senior offices. And he decides, all these other people have built churches and stuff. I'm going to go much better than that. I'm going to build a whole city. I'm going to build the ideal platonic city.

And that's Zamość. So he wants to model it on the cities that he's seen in Italy. He gets an architect called Bernardo Morando. Do you want the cities that he's seen in italy he gets a an architect called bernardo mirando do you want to guess where he's from uh would he be from italy yeah the town padua he's from padua exactly so this is the this is the prince charles of yes it's kind of the poundberry of it is the poundberry so bernardoardo Miranda builds this, designs this city, which is all geometric, everything perpendicular, the streets parallel. You've got a palace at one end, you've got the town hall at the center, a star-shaped fort surrounding it, arcaded kind of two-story tenement houses, so colonnades and things all brightly colored and and it's a tremendous i mean it's a great success you know for once in the rest is history nothing goes wrong he builds this place it's absolutely beautiful again um i mentioned this with klakoff zamost becomes a very

big jewish center so it becomes a great base for hasidic Judaism. So the outbreak of World War II, just under half of its population who are living in these, this sort of Renaissance Italian style town are Jews. They are all deported by the Germans under the most horrific circumstances. I mean, to read the stories of the deportation from Zamość are horrible. Many of them were killed on the spot. The rest basically were all killed in Belzec or Auschwitz.

So to give you a sense of the death toll, there were about almost 13,000 before the war. By the end of the war, there were seven. So, you know, awful. The Germans, when they got there, were not impressed with the place. They did not, it turned out. I thought they would enjoy a bit of of they said it wasn't in a sufficiently

german right they didn't like a sort of italian renaissance building in eastern poland the ss took it over and they wanted to call it to rename it himmler start and himmler said no because hitler had not yet had a city named after him and it would be presumptuous presumptuous so they decided they would rename it flugstart which means plow town which is not as good a name as zosch and they wanted to blow up all the buildings and replace them with german buildings but fortunately well and this is a theme well again we'll come back to the local german administrator thought this was bonkers you know he just thought that was crazy so he played for time he kept saying well what kind of german architecture

would we replace it with and rejecting all the designs to make sure that basically they hadn't blown it up by the time the red army arrived to liberate it and that's why if you go to some today in the east of poland it is still this perfectly preserved temple to the values of the Renaissance. And can I ask you, the Count Zamoyski who built it, is he the ancestor of Adam Zamoyski? I believe he is. The distinguished Polish historian.

Exactly. I believe he is. I know that Adam Zamoyski is part of the great Zamoyski dynasty. So even if he can't trace his descent, I think there's almost definitely a link. Okay, so that's another place to visit. Yes, good. So Tom, that was number seven, number six, now number five. The big question with this one is whether or not you like canals.

I love a canal. I've just come back from Venice. Oh, my word. Last month I was in Venice. I went on a gondola. Okay. I love a canal. It's a very different kind of canal.

You know, and I love Birmingham, the Venice of the north. Well, this is a rural canal. Are you happy with rural canals? Yes, I'm happy. So this is the Elblong Canal. It's spelt Elblag but it's pronounced elbląg so my uh polish contacts tell me um and so we've leaped further forward in time here so the zamoyski kind of period when they're building zamoysk is kind of a real golden age for

the poles um you know poland is big in self-confidence and so on. But from the mid-17th century onwards, Poland is in decline. It's invaded by Sweden. It's invaded by Russia. Warsaw is destroyed by the Swedes. This is the period that the Poles call the Deluge. And I think it's never good to have a period in your history called the Deluge.

Slightly what we've been living through. They end up being partitioned by their neighbours, so Russia, Prussia and Austria. And in the late 18th century, a bit is taken over by Prussia. Now, the area of Elbląg had been founded by the Teutonic Knights and it had been then taken over by Poland. And then at the end of the 18th century, it becomes Prussian,

becomes basically East Prussia. If you are going to be partitioned by the Russians, the Prussians and the Austrians, I guess, I mean, it seems like a weird thing to say, but you probably want to be in the Prussian bit. Because they'll build you industrial infrastructure. Exactly. The Prussians are the

most economically advanced. I mean, none of it's ideal. I think you least want to be in the Russian bit, frankly. Isn't that always the case? It is always the case. But the Prussians invest in economic development. So the Elbląg Canal is the most famous example of this. It's built between 1825 and 1844. It's 50 miles long. Now, we live in a country famous for its canals, its industrial canals. So you might think, well, so what? Who cares? The amazing thing about it is that it connects land areas that are on completely different levels.

And instead of you having to sort of you know the canal comes to an end or something what they do is your boat goes on to a kind of carriage on a track and it uses all kind of wheels and stuff to basically pull you up this steep oh right so a bit like um those rides at theme parks right exactly like the rides at theme parks and then you go whooshing down and get splashed exactly so basically does that so that's that's i mean that's a lot less work than having to go up loads of locks isn't it exactly it's much it's much it's it's much better than locks actually i think it would be much i haven't been on it myself michael palin has been on it has he he went to his in his series

the new europe and he's got a big description in his book about how they're sailing along perfectly normally and then they suddenly they find themselves going up at kind of 45 degrees oh i'm not gonna do it yeah let's see they pass another boat that's going down at 45 degrees next to them which sounds absolutely amazing so they go you do lots of these sort of slipways in your journey so this is a part of poland that was prussian and then it was taken over uh and is this is this the only place in europe where they have this is that why it's a wonder or is this standard prussian canal building. I'm not massively familiar with canal technology. Right.

But I think I've never heard of anywhere having it. I've never heard of it. No. It sounds great. So, Tom, you would like that as well. I would. It sounds. Yes.

Do you know what? I'm quite minded to work out a trip to Poland that's entirely structured around these seven wonders. And there's one place in Poland I particularly want to visit and I will be interested to see if it's in the list. And if it's not, then I'll have eight wonders. I think at this point, we should take a break. And when we come back, we'll have the last four wonders and we'll see if the wonder that I want to visit

is numbered among them. Very good. I'm Marina Hyde. among them. Very good. free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest is entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com hello welcome back to the rest is history our polish episode in our world cup odyssey um and we're looking at the seven wonders of poland we've had three, Dominic, and you're going to tell us now about the fourth. So, Tom, you will recall you were very sceptical. I thought cruelly sceptical about Cracus, who poisoned a dragon with a lamb. Yes. The founder of Cracus.

I am sceptical of him. Now, you will recall the name of the dragon, Smok Wawelski. Yes. all recall the name of the dragon smock vavelsky yes and cracker said you know he lived in the cave under this hill that is now named after him vavel hill uh in krakow and the fourth wonder is the complex that's on the top of of vavel hill so we're back in krakow and there are two buildings on this on this hill that are worthy of note. So one of them, very much a building after your heart, is the cathedral. Ah, good.

So it's a Gothic cathedral. The Polish kings used to be crowned here, and they would go on this procession through Krakow to get to the cathedral. And the route of the procession was known as the Royal Road. So you can still walk the Royal Road or whatever. Often Polish kings were buried in the cathedral. lots of other famous people are buried there you know the titanic figures of polish history so general sikorski who is the leader of the polish government in exile in the second world war in london he's buried there uh joseph pilsudski who beat the russians um in

the 1920s and is the sort of father of independent poland he's buried there it's it's the westminster abbey of it is the westminster abbey yeah the greatest polish poet adam mitskevich great romantic writer uh famous his poem pan tadeusz he is buried there but the most famous person tom a krakow boy former krakow student uh now he's not buried there. But the most famous person, Tom, a Krakow boy, former Krakow student. Now, he's not buried there, but he is associated with the building. A man called Karol Wojtyla. And you certainly will know who he is because he went on to become the Pope. Pope John Paul II.

And his return to Poland in 1979 was a key moment in the foundation of solidarity, the trade union that helped to bring down communism. Is Lech Walesa buried there? He's not dead. Lech Walesa's still alive? Yeah, he's 79. Oh, bless him. I mean, he looked about 49 when he was leading Solidarity.

Yeah, he did. He looked like an ancient Gaul, didn't he? He looked like a man who worked in a Polish shipyard. Well, he did but he looked like an ancient ghoul didn't he had a he looked like a yeah like a man who worked in a polish shipyard yeah so i mean well he did well he did uh so he's not buried there but but maybe he will be i just think he will be um so the other building on the hill is called vavel castle and this has a slightly grimmer story um so it's a real hodgepodge it's not a particularly attractive building it's a hodgepodge. It's not a particularly attractive building. It's a hodgepodge of Gothic Renaissance and Baroque. It was always being looted by the Swedes

and by the Prussians and so on. When Poland was partitioned, Krakow was Austrian, and the Austrians treated it with sort of neglect. So it was... It fell into disrepair. But after Poland became independent at the end of World War I,

it became an unofficial residence of the Polish president, although the Polish president spent most of his time in Warsaw. When he came to Kraków, he would stay there. Then the Germans invade in 1939, and its most infamous resident is the guy who Hitler sends to run occupied Poland, known as the General Government, who is his personal lawyer, Hans Frank, I suppose, about the Nazis, because Hans Frank was not a brutal Philistine. He was an extremely civilized and educated man who played the piano, who decorated the castle with looted artworks, who summoned intellectuals and people to play chess with and all these kinds of things so he's got it's quite a troubling i mean he's a troubling figure anyway obviously but he's a he's a troubling figure because he is you know he's that that stereotype of a kind of

yeah extremely elegantly you know his wife yeah you know she she styles herself as the queen of poland the thing is um polish people are now under his rule banned from visiting their own castle they can only visit if they're cleaners now the only poles allowed inside and you mentioned roman polanski in the first half of this episode polanski's mother was a cleaner and she was allowed, therefore, to visit the castle when Hans Frank was there. And at the end of the war, a bit like with Zamosh, when the Nazis are clearly losing, they give instructions for the castle to be wired with dynamite and blown up. But for reasons that to this day I think are slightly unclear,

they didn't detonate it, so the castle was not in fact destroyed. And just a question about the Soviets when they arrive. Yeah. They don't kind of see these as… Bourgeois. Well, emblems of Polish identity as well as emblems of feudal reaction. I suspect the Soviets do see that. But what's interesting is that under the Polish communist regime

at the end of World War II, there's a huge effort that goes into conservation. So particularly in Warsaw, Warsaw is rebuilt under the communists in this kind of painstaking style. You go to Warsaw, there's sort of the old town square and stuff. I mean, all that is, as it were, inverted commas,

fake rebuilt at the end of world war two. So no, I think the Polish, the Polish communist authorities have a, they're proud of the country's history. Yes. Well, well with,

to a degree, I mean, it'd be interesting to, if we have Polish listeners who know more about this stuff than frankly, than I do, um, to explain the kind of the kind of very ambiguous relationship they have with their own past. So that's number four, anyway.

We've got three to go, Tom. Okay. And the top three, I have to say, they are absolutely fantastic-sounding places, none of which I have been to. So you've been to the other four, have you? If you believe I've been to the other four, that uh if you believe i've been to the other four that's a tribute to my podcasting because i haven't no it was just the way you frame that yes i know what i find that deliberately to try and suggest above a degree of expertise you're an old poland hand exactly well i know my

i know my linguistic ability well he, you've been to Belarus. I have been to Belarus. And in fact, I've been to Warsaw, but I haven't been to... I've never been anywhere in Poland outside Warsaw. Okay, so number three, I know everybody likes a proper castle, and this is a proper castle. This is, in fact, the largest castle in the world. Is it?

It's Malbork Castle. Wow. The great castle of the Teutonic knights the nazis must have loved them they oh well i'll tell you and not just the nazis as we will discover so the teutonic knights as you will probably note on were founded in acre in 1191 by german merchants and then they get involved in all these kind of prussian crusades and baltic crusades a few decades later so in the early what are we the early um 13th century when the teutonic knights had conquered what's called old prussia so basically east prussia these days it's partly poland partly the russian enclave of cliningrad they wanted to cement their control of the area over the baltic tribes and of course they do what people do in the Middle Ages. They build this massive castle.

And it clearly took them, there's no records left of the castle's building, but we know that it must have taken them decades. It's on the bank of the river Nogat, and they called it Marienburg after their patron saint, the Virgin Mary. Eventually, it becomes the administrative center of the Teutonic Knights' kind of land of East Prussia. It gives them control of the amber trade on the river. So obviously, Baltic amber is incredibly lucrative. And it acquires this sort of romantic place in the German-speaking world's imagination as the castle of these sort of terrifyingly grim crusaders who have subdued the tribes of the sort of wild, swampy, forested northeast. But the Teutonic state is defeated, cruciallycially at the battle of grunwald in 1410

so that's the the eisenstein in the eisenstein film is it no that's that's that's by alexander nevsky when they're attacking russia but they're then beaten by the poles by the poles and lithuanians and that was the battle of late pipus but this is the battle of grunwaldwald so they're beaten there in 1410 and after that point the Teutonic state is never really the same again so ultimately Marienburg castle is taken over by the um by the Poles and it goes through a time when Poland is partitioned when it's Prussian again and then it basically becomes Polish at the end of World War II and is polish obviously to this day and the remarkable thing about it so i've described it as a castle but actually it doesn't really give a true sense because of course the remarkable thing about it is that it is brick it is all brick not stone so it's kind of red brick a red brick castle

it's one of the world's largest brick buildings of any kind. So it has churches, it has chapels, it has a colossal refectory, it has all this kind of stuff. And it looks, therefore, completely unlike a castle you'd find in, you know, North Wales or the Long Dock or the other great kind of castle. Do you know, I have seen it. I mean, not in person, but I know about it. Yeah.

Are you aficionado of medieval combat, which is a sport that was originally developed by the Russians? You've told me about this before. And then they practiced it. It was too brutal. So then they reconfigured it and expelled the Russians. Anyway, they have an annual championship. And they do it there.

One of the annual championships was at Marburg. Well, you see, you should definitely visit it tom you'd love it because do you know who also you'd be following in the footsteps of a great friend of the rest is history do you want to guess who it is uh who would enjoy a teutonic knight's castle in occupied you know poland i don't know it's kaiser wilhelm the second oh is it yeah is it and you know what he did he wore the right shoes to this i guess he well he he did because he dressed up as a teutonic monk that's definitely wearing the right costume i would not recommend that you do what he did next which is he gave a virulently violently anti-polish speech no i wouldn't i think that would be very high risk but you could dine i've i've dug out for you the um

the menu for what the kaiser ate when he went to uh malbork castle was it bison he's kicked off with something called kaiser soup i don't know what that is but i think a soup i was about to say you should definitely have something named after yourself we should find we should find that out shouldn't we yeah we could have a kind of restless history restaurant well i was reality of the day kaiser soup the kaiser started with something named after himself and you should do that but then i looked at the rest of the menu this will not be an issue for you because the very next dish was called turbot fish in holland style brilliant so you're laughing he had veal he had ham what in this menu he had strasburger pudding i don't know what that is he had goose he had

asparagus strawberries and cream cheese sticks and desserts and what was he after dinner entertainment don't know what's that was there any uh any uh any dancing yeah german generals dressed as Any ballet dancing. Yeah. German generals dressed as ballerinas who died unexpectedly. Sorry, this is a reference to our podcast about the world's worst parties, which will be lost on some listeners. Anyway, that's your holiday absolutely sorted, isn't it? Yes, it is. You're laughing. It is.

So we've got two to go. Okay. Number two is another beautiful city with a scientific connection tom just for you this is where copernicus comes in yes this is a town of toronia so this is uh in central poland it's midway between warsaw and gdansk i won't go give you a whole run through through its early history because that's kind of very similar to the others is Is there a dragon? There's no dragon. There's an awful lot of cloth hall-type behavior. So guilds, Hanseatic leagues. Hanseatic league carrying on.

Artisans, you know, all this sort of stuff. Because it's located on the River Vistula. Which always slightly sounds like a medical condition, I think. It does. It does, yeah. Nice. Got a terrible viscera. So it's on a ford in the Vistula, so it's a perfect trading center.

It becomes a big Protestant center. It's very multicultural. But there are three things that mark it out. First of all, like some of these other places, it is not damaged in the Second World War. So it's medieval architecture. Just luck. It had awful massacres, actually, in World War ii and it was a big center for the polish resistance but through

luck it wasn't particularly damaged um it has i read the best collection of gothic brick buildings in europe so it has a cathedral like medieval brick buildings, Poland is clearly the place to go. Not only is Poland the place, but this has probably been the best podcast of your life. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Your hour has come. Yeah. Yes.

So there's guild halls, there's merchant's houses. Now, there's one house in particular that you would want to visit, Tom. It's on 17 Copernica street i definitely would it's a sort of again a brick building gothic brick sort of narrow terrace soaring so the kind of building absolutely that you would see if you went to bruges or ghent or somewhere um now in the 15th century this belonged to a man called mikawai who came from a silesian family he was a copper trader and he married a local counselor's daughter called barbara and they had barbara yes that is that a polish name maybe clearly it is it's kind of um wow well actually national intensity

is slightly muddy and ambiguous experience we should go go on to yeah exactly is it german or polish um because their son we call their son nicholas copernicus um he was born in 1473 and he is a classic polish renaissance figure he's a doctorate in law he's a mathematician he's a cathedral canon he's obsessed obviously with astronomy which is why we know about him. But what is he? Is he, in a vertical, Polish? Well, he spoke Latin, Greek, Italian, and Polish, but probably his native language was German.

But, of course, the Poles claim him. I mean, he studied in Padua, of course. Where else? He spent time in Rome. He's most famous for his thing about revolutions of the heavenly spheres. And, of course, Poland makes a huge deal about Copernicus, as you would. But the Germans, historically, have always tried to claim Copernicus as German. So I looked up what Norman Davis, the great historian of Poland, said.

He said, taking everything into consideration, there is good reason to regard Copernicus both as a German and as a pole. And yet in the sense that modern nationalists understand it, he was of course, neither. So that's the very norm Davis. It is. It is.

Having his cake, eating it, Tom, or is he having his gingerbread and eating it because torunia is also the world's great center of gingerbread making that is top podcasting thank you seamless that was kind of like a ballerina like a german general in a tutu doing a perfect pirouette absolutely Absolutely masterly. So Torunia is perfectly placed for gingerbread. They've got everything they need. They've got all the wheat and all

that stuff. They've got water. They've also got the spices because of its position on the trade routes. So spices are coming through from the Black Sea and so on or they're coming to Gdansk. So the first mention of Torunia gingerbread comes from 1380

the cistercians produced loads of gingerbread under the prussians there was a factory that was exporting gingerbread so this is obviously in the i say under the prussians we're talking about in the 19th century they were exporting gingerbread from this town to China, would you believe? I know I sound like Liz Truss talking about pork markets. Exactly. I'm talking about gingerbread markets. And if you go there, Tom, you can buy gingerbread moulded in the shape of Pope John Paul II. Wow.

But surely in Copernicus as well, or maybe a model of the Copernican universe? Undoubtedly. Undoubtedly undoubtedly i've got to go so i've got one wonder left the top wonder now you said you had a wonder of your own that you wanted to see and i wonder if it well i wonder if it's going to be the same one which is the place you want to see well i don't know how to pronounce it what is it okay it's a forest it's not that okay can i? Okay, we'll come to... Tell me about your forest.

I hope that I have my pronunciation right. It's the B-O-A-S-I-A forest. The B-O-A-S-I-A forest. I freely admit... Bang goes that money from the Polish tourist board. But it's also in Belarus. So I thought that might be of interest to you. I know that might be of interest to you. And it's supposedly the only part of the primordial European forest that Caesar saw when he went to the Rhine.

And it's all that there is left. That's absolutely right. And there's 800 of the European bison left that, again, were part of the primordial cattle stock that roamed it. And there's a brilliant chapter about it in one of shama's books i think it's landscape and memory uh and ever since i read that i've wanted to go so um that's not but that's not one of the wonders that's not it i guess because part of it is in belarus so it's in belarus that's where they proclaimed the end i think of the soviet union oh yeah right. On the Belarusian side.

No, this is a salt mine. A salt mine? Are you not familiar with a Vyolitska salt mine? No. You would love it. Okay, convince me. So Vyolitska is just outside Krakow. The mine goes 1,000 feet deep.

The chambers and corridors of the mine, Tom, extend for 178 miles. Okay, that is a wonder. Embers and corridors of the mine, Tom, extend for 178 miles. Okay. That is a wonder. That really is a wonder. Yeah. God. So they discovered salt.

They started in the sort of 11th, well, before that, actually, even in the Neolithic times, they found salt, and they were sort of getting salt from springs, boiling it, and so on. In the 11th and 12th centuries, they were sort of getting salt from springs boiling it and so on in the 11th and 12th centuries they were digging wells in the 13th century they started to find lumps of rock salt and then it occurred to them that they could start mining uh king casimir the great he really encouraged this um so that in the mid 14th century, about a third of the Polish Royal treasury's income was coming from this salt, this salt mine.

Unbelievably, uh, the end of the middle ages, they had four mining shafts. They're producing about 8,000 tons of salt. God, I've, I've just looked it up.

They've got a chapel. Yes. The first, so God, it looks amazing. It looks like, it looks like something from the rings of power. It is. It's bloody Casa so. God, it looks amazing. It looks like something from the Rings of Power. It is.

It's bloody Casa Doom. Yes, it is. Yes, the Mines of Moria. So tourists start going in the early modern period. Do you know, Tom, the name of the first tourist to visit the Wieliczka salt mine? Dominic Schlandbruch. No, it was Nicholas Copernicus. Was it? Wow. The threads you were weaving into a beautiful tapestry he visited in 1493 and there's a massive figure of copernicus set up inside the

salt mine and you could admire it when you go so it's so large that people start creating maps of it um so there are beautifully illustrated maps of it from the early 17th century. By the mid-17th century, the salt mine is on three different levels. Tourists are going every year. It's mentioned by European travelers. They have to get personal permission from the king.

As I said, the Krakow area is taken over by the Austrians. The Austrians are very keen on this. They build a railway line underneath through these sort of tunnels of salt. And is that railway line, is it still going? I believe it's still there. Horse-drawn railway. But the Austrians are very keen on attracting tourists.

They think this will, and they were right because they arrange all kinds of things. so you go in from 1868 onwards you can go on a horse-drawn railway through the mine uh you can do what they call the devil's drop which is the miners descent into the mine on a rope sort of bungee jump into the mine you can go on boat rides inside the mine on a lake of salt wow and there's also there's a there's a miners orchestra that will play for you while you're touring the mine and they'll also do fireworks unbelievably i'm not sure i'd want not well i'm sure it's safe but yeah there's always the first time isn't there so it became incredibly incredibly popular and under independent poland at the end of the first world war becomes a real symbol of national

identity um so more than 100 000 people would visit every year they would organize all kinds of conventions political rallies things like that inside the mine it's slightly declined under communism they're no longer really producing. Salt production kind of reaches a peak in the 1970s and then declines, but tourism becomes more and more important. Basically, salt production ended in 1996, and it's now purely all about tourism. So the Statue of Copernicus, made of salt, of course. And this was made when? So the Statue of Copernicus was made in of course and this was made when so the statue

copernicus was made in the 20th century it's the 500th anniversary of his birth what a wonderful tribute yeah it's a great point of pride to the miners to make statues of people they approve of the most famous statue there is the statue of saint kinga i know you like saint tom but are you familiar with the story of saint kinga no so she was a hungarian princess and she had an arranged marriage with the prince of krakow who was called boaswaf the chaste that's that's the kind of bridegroom that you want isn't it yeah it bodes well itodes well. Which is that Henry VIII. Yeah. I don't know. So she, as a dowry,

she asks her father, the King of Hungary, I mean, this is a slightly implausible story, for a lump of salt. He gives her this lump of salt. And she does a very strange thing. Before she leaves Hungary, she throws her engagement ring from the Polish prince into the shaft of the salt mine

that she got this lump of salt from. Then she goes off to Poland, to Krakow, and she says to the miners when she arrives, dig a huge pit until you come to a rock. They dig this pit. They find the ring. They come to the rock. They find a massive lump of salt

presumably the same lump of salt that she had been given as the dowry they split it in two do you know what they find inside the ring

the ring that's magic so from that day on she became the patron saint of salt miners in Krakow I mean I don't think

that's really saintly behavior just miraculous yeah so her the miners built her a chapel made of salt inside the salt mine at the turn of the 20th century um so it's 100 meters beneath the earth the floor is made of salt there are murals of biblical scenes all made of salt chandeliers all of this stuff now the thing is this is how i want to end this podcast you can book that chapel now tom for 400 people and have meetings of your own there and i think this would be the most brilliant location for a meeting of the members of the rest is history club yeah it would yes it really would but i think what it depends on i want to see i will not arrange that meeting and i don't want goldhanger productions to arrange that

meeting unless they see a rush of new applications to join the rest is history club on the back of this podcast so this is an incentive real incentive for listeners. If you want to have your meeting in the bowels of an incredibly safe salt mine where they've had fireworks. What could possibly go wrong? Yeah. Before Tom Holland takes you on a canal trip at 45 degrees. Yeah. Well, Dominic, that was brilliant.

I didn't really know anything about any of those. And I absolutely want to go and see them all. So Poland, here I come. I think we should do Rest Is History. We should do location reports. We should. Yes, we should. That'd be great.

Kind of like Michael Palin. Yeah, exactly. Perfect. All right. Well, thank you all for listening I won't say goodbye in Polish because my Polish frankly

is non-existent but you'll just have to imagine it for yourselves and on that bombshell goodbye bye-bye thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening,

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