Wawel Dragon

The Wawel Dragon, Smok Wawelski, is the best-known creature of Polish legend. It is said to have lived in a cave at the foot of Wawel Hill in Kraków, destroying houses and eating livestock and young women, until it was defeated through cunning. The tale is linked to the city’s legendary founder, King Krak.

The earliest account is in the chronicle of Wincenty Kadłubek, written about 1200. There, Krak’s sons defeated the dragon by feeding it cattle skins stuffed with sulphur; the younger son then killed his brother, was banished, and Krak’s daughter Wanda became ruler. In the fifteenth century Jan Długosz gave the credit to Krak himself, and in 1597 Marcin Bielski gave it to a cobbler, Skuba. The popular version known to children, in which a cobbler’s apprentice tricks the dragon with a sulphur-filled lamb, uses a name, Dratewka, which comes from twentieth-century children’s literature.

The Dragon’s Den, Smocza Jama, is a real limestone cave of about 276 metres beneath the hill, opened to visitors in 1842 after being bricked up in the nineteenth century. It was long the site of a public house and the name Smocza Jama is first recorded by Bielski in 1551. Visitors climb about 135 steps to the entrance and leave at the foot of Wawel, by the Vistula. A metal dragon by the sculptor Bronisław Chromy, installed in 1972, stands there and breathes fire.

Scholars have linked the tale to pre-Christian myth, the biblical story of Daniel and the dragon, and allegories of conflicts in early Polish history.

A large, fire-breathing dragon with a long neck, wings and a taste for livestock; the statue shows a scaled, horned beast with a flame jet.

The Dragon’s Den beneath Wawel Hill, above the Vistula in Kraków.

The dragon is a symbol of Kraków, shown on souvenirs and in school plays. Its fire-breathing statue is a favourite photo stop for visitors, and the cave is among Kraków’s most popular sights.