National Pantheon in the Church of Saints Peter and Paul Kraków

Monuments

Bogato zdobiona fasada murowanego kościoła. Na ogrodzeniu na filarach stoi 12 posągów apostołów. Część kościoła jest zasłonięta przez duże drzewo. Przed ogrodzeniem kościoła przechadzają się ludzie. Po prawej fragment innego kościoła, nad wszystkim jest błękitne niebo.

ul. Grodzka 52a, 31-044 Kraków Tourist region: Kraków i okolice

tel. +48 124226573
tel. +48 123073747

The National Pantheon occupies the former crypts in the Church of Saints Peter and Paul and is expected to occupy a new building in the church courtyard in the future. It continues the idea of the Krypta Zasłużonych na Skałce. It is a new resting place for eminent Polish creators of culture, science, and art, for upholding traditions, national memory, and pride, nurturing Polishness, and fulfilling the function of a museum and playing an educational role.

The idea of the Pantheon was born in 2009 after the Pauline Fathers withdrew from the expansion of the Crypt of the Deserving on Skałka. The idea was the brainchild of Professor Franciszek Ziejka, whose initiative was taken up by academic circles and the administrative and local authorities of Kraków and the Małopolska Voivodeship. The Pantheon will consist of the rebuilt crypts of the Baroque church connected to a new building in the church courtyard. The entrance to the Pantheon is through the church; once completed, the entrance and exit will be independent of one another. The first part of the facility was opened in 2012, on the 400th anniversary of Father Peter Skarga's death.

The creation and operation of the Pantheon is overseen by the National Pantheon Foundation, established by eleven public Kraków universities, the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Archdiocese of Kraków. The Pantheon Chapter decides on burials.

Before the Pantheon was created, the following were buried here: Jesuit Piotr Skarga (1612), Bishop Andrzej Trzebicki (1679) and Count Witold Szeliga Bieliński (1833). After the Pantheon was created, the following were laid to rest here: playwright and prose writer Slawomir Mrozek (2013), poet Adam Zagajewski (2021), Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek (2019), composer Krzysztof Penderecki (2022), Jagiellonian University professors Karol Olszewski (1915) and Zygmunt Wróblewski (1888), and the mathematician-cryptologists Marian Rejewski, who broke the Enigma cypher (1980), Jerzy Różycki (1942) and Henryk Zygalski (1978).

The Church of Saints Peter and Paul itself is the first Baroque church in the city, built on the site of a Gothic church that burned down in 1455. The new church for the Jesuit order, which arrived in 1583, was being built from 1596 by Joseph Britius to a design by Giovanni de Rossis and completed between 1605 and 1619 by Giovanni Trevano of Lombardy. Its design includes the façade, dome and interior decoration, and it is modelled on Baroque Roman Jesuit churches. After the order's dissolution in 1773, the church was taken over by the National Education Commission and handed over to the University of Kraków, and in 1786 was passed on to the Cistercians from Mogiła. It was an Orthodox church from 1809 to 1815 and a Catholic church from 1830.