Venue/Address: Wawel 3
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Wawel Cathedral and Castle stand on Wawel Hill, a 15-acre rocky limestone outcropping on the banks of the Vistula River, dominating Old Town Krakow. The hill is a natural point for fortification on the otherwise flat Vistula Plain. In the 8th century Wawel Hill was topped with a tribal stronghold; since the 10th century it has hosted a royal residence and the seat of the bishops of Krakow.

From 1037, when Kraków became the capital of Poland, Polish kings were crowned and buried in Wawel Cathedral. The present cathedral, the third to stand on this site, was begun in 1320 and completed in 1364.

The original austere structure remains mostly unchanged today, save for some Renaissance and baroque chapels that now huddle up against it. Father Karol Wojtyla, later to become Pope John Paul II, said his first Mass in the crypt of Wawel Cathedral on November 3, 1946. Seventeen years later, he took over the cathedral as Archbishop of Krakow.

Fifteen years after that, he led the entire Roman Catholic world as Pope.