1. Kraków. Wawel Royal Castle2. Kraków. The Royal Archcathedral Basilica of St Stanislaus and St Wenceslaus3. Kraków. Complex of Renaissance mansions in Kanonicza street4. Kraków. Complex of Renaissance mansions in the historical city centre5. Kraków. Villa Decius6. Zielonki. Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary7. Giebultów. Church of St Giles8. Modlnica. Church of St Adalbert and Our Lady of Sorrows910. Ksiaz Wielki. Mirow Castle in Ksiaz Wielki11. Miechów. Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre12. Bodzentyn. Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr13. Sucha Beskidzka. Castle in Sucha Beskidzka14. Kraków - Mogila. Sanctuary of The Holy Cross of The Cistercian Abbey15. Kraków - Branice. Branicki Villa - Lamus16. Niepolomice. Royal Castle in Niepolomice17. Niepolomice. Church of Ten Thousand Martyrs - Memorial Chapel of Branicki Family18. Tarnów. The Town Hall19. Tarnów. Complex of Renaissance townhouses in the Old Town20. Tarnów. Cathedral Basilica of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary21. Wilczyska. Jezów Manor House22. Szymbark. Castellum: Renaissance fortified manor house in Szymbark
Sułoszowa. Pieskowa Skała Castle
The castle in Pieskowa Skała was a defensive structure, and as such is located on a rock outcrop looking towards the west. From 1542 onwards it belonged to Hieronim Szafraniec, who, in the first half of the 16th century started its reconstruction, probably with the participation of an Italian architect, Niccolò Castiglione and Gabriel Słoński from Kraków. It can be surmised that the secretary to King Sigismund I the Old, Hieronim Szafraniec, having witnessed the transformation of the royal residence in Wawel, introduced certain Renaissance elements into the interiors in Pieskowa Skała. In 1557, the castle was inherited by Stanisław Szafraniec who refurbished the Gothic castle in Renaissance style. The following transformations took place in 1640 and were the work of Michał Zebrzydowski, who strengthened the system of fortifications and changed the silhouette of the building. From the east, he built two powerful bastions connected to the central entrance gate by means of a curtain wall. In this way the castle obtained another courtyard (the so-called external). The defence system was introduced and reinforced with another moat before the curtain wall presented a modern type of reinforcement, the so-called bastion fortress, developed in Italy in the mid-16th century.
A single entrance leads into the castle on the eastern side. This passes through a gate in the curtain wall connecting two bastions. On entering the spacious courtyard, you notice the three-storey-high building of the castle with an avant-corps containing a two-floor Renaissance loggia on the left. The following gate leads into the internal arcaded courtyard whose architecture is composed of a Renaissance arcaded gallery on the level of the first and second floors. The arcades, with stone pillars of square cross-section and crowned with Tuscan capitals, support semi-circular stone archivolts and bestow a north Italian spirit to the architecture of the place. Twenty-four Renaissance gargoyles are the main decoration of the courtyard. These take the form of stylised human and animal heads and are presented in the triangles between the archivolts, together with cartouches bearing the Stary Koń (Stanisław Szafraniec's) and Rawicz (his wife née Dębieńska's) coats of arms. The sculptures are of a high artistic level and were produced in two workshops in Silesia. The gargoyles between the arcades are very varied and are portrayed naturalistically, if not mockingly.
The chambers are accessed directly from the gallery through doors framed with stone portals. A panoramic loggia, added from the eastern side to command a broad and picturesque view, is adjacent to the huge corner chambers of the first and second floors. The remnants of murals discovered in the arcaded gallery, on the walls of the loggia, and inside the rooms suggest that all the interiors had lavish and colourful wall decorations. Thanks to the restoration works, the individual rooms in the castle have been returned to their original dimensions from the time of Renaissance.
The internal garden, situated in the southern bastion, complements the Renaissance design and makes reference to 16th-century plans.
Today the castle is a museum, a branch of the Wawel Royal Castle-State Art Collection.
Italian cultural and artistic standards were transmitted to countries lying north of the Alps. Poland of the 16th century was among them. The art practised here by the Italian artists provided a point of reference for cultural pioneers from the highest social strata: court, ecclesiastical, and magnate elites, and the realm of the bourgeois patriciate. Later, this was more generally accepted and began to participate in the creation of a cultural and artistic tradition, obviously of a peripheral nature in relation to any centres of the Italian Renaissance and also in relation to the leading centres of the Renaissance in Poland such as Wawel.
An element that makes Pieskowa Skała Castle stand out among Renaissance projects is the panoramic loggia. The broad and exceedingly picturesque view that the castle commands to south-east, with the famous rock known as Maczuga (The Mace) in the foreground, and the entire valley of the Prądnik river, strongly favoured the establishment of a loggia in this location. The origin of a loggia with a viewpoint must be sought in Italian Renaissance villas. This form of architecture expresses, among other things, the new attitude of man to the nature surrounding him during the period of humanism.
Both the external loggia and the arcaded courtyard make this building one of the most important elements of Renaissance heritage, both in Małopolska and in the entire country. The sculpted decoration in the form of gargoyles is proof of the impact of the art of northern Europe on the Renaissance in Poland. It was a time when, in addition to the Italian impact on the determination of local visual culture, trends coming from the Netherlands made an ever stronger mark. The change could be seen most particularly wherever a new climate developed favourable to new and revolutionary notions in matters of faith. At the time, Stanisław Szafraniec was one of the most ardent representatives of religious dissenters, which was well exemplified by his sojourn in Germany where he accompanied Albrecht Prince of Prussia.
Another proof of the Renaissance sense of designing residential quarters, which, unlike Gothic interiors, were bright and lit with additional sunlight, are the interiors of the castle chambers with large windows and wide window jambs.
