Ostrów Tumski Cradle of Poland’s First Kingdom

The Island of Founding Rulers
Ostrów Tumski was a settlement from the later part of the 10th century and fortified as a wooden fort with defenses that were not needed due to the location and kinship ties to other tribes.

Realizing its value, Duke Mieszko I turned it into a powerfully fortified stronghold, separating the administrative buildings and the houses of worship. Among the first stone buildings were a palace for the duke and a chapel, financed by his Christian wife, Princess Dobrawa of Bohemia.

In 966 Mieszko I was baptized—a significant event often referred to as the baptism of Poland, which marked the beginning of Polish statehood based on the Western Christian rite.

The latter was Christianity and his conversion constituted the Christianization of the Polish state. He constructed a baptistery and thus was shorted after Bishop Jordan came into the country and laid the cornerstone of what was later to become the first Polish cathedral. Under the nave of today’s church lie the ruins of that baptistery.

By the end of the 19th century, an imposing basilica stood on Ostrów Tumski, symbolic of the Piast dynasty’s acculturation to Christian Europe. Mieszko I was interred in PoznaÅ„ in 992. His son BolesÅ‚aw I Chrobry, Poland’s first crowned king, was interred next to him in 1025.

Survival Through Conflict and Change
The aura of Ostrów Tumski remained, and the cathedral became the royal necropolis of the Piast family. PoznaÅ„ was called Poland's former capital and the resting place of the first kings of Poland by chroniclers such as Jan DÅ‚ugosz.

But its tranquillity was disturbed in 1038 when Czech Duke BrzetysÅ‚aw I invaded and pillaged the island. The cathedral was torched and defiled. It was rebuilt years later by Prince Casimir the Restorer who resurrected the island as the spiritual center of the island, while political power moved more and more towards Kraków.

A Testament to the Living Origins of the Nation
Visitors to the current cathedral pass through strata of time. The Gothic interior contains bishops’ tombs, remnants of the original walls, and, most strikingly, the Golden Chapel — a 19th-century shrine from Poland’s partitioned days in homage to its founding rulers. Its golden dome contains the sarcophagi of Mieszko I and BolesÅ‚aw the Brave. In this place stand two king’s statues:

Mieszko as a figure of faith, and Bolesław as a symbol of force.

The walls are painted; scenes from Poland’s baptism and the Congress of Gniezno (key moments in the shaping of the nation) adorn them. Ostrów Tumski is no longer a political center, but remains a symbolic heart of Poland — the place where stone and memory guard the first echoes of a kingdom.