The Bird Room
early seventeenth century
Of all the private rooms of the kings, this is the one that visitors remember. It takes its name from the gilded wooden birds that once hung from the ceiling in the reign of King Sigismund the Third Vasa, and although the birds themselves are long gone, the name has stayed. The room belongs to the wing rebuilt after a fire in fifteen ninety five, and it shows a different taste from the Renaissance halls next door: heavier, darker, more Baroque, with a taste for marble, gilding and richly coloured fabric.
Notice the black marble portal with its scrolled pediment, one of the finest early Baroque doorways in Poland, and the painted frieze under the ceiling. The walls are hung with tapestries and the furniture is a mixture of Italian and northern European pieces of the seventeenth century. Sigismund the Third was a passionate amateur goldsmith and painter, and rooms like this one were where he worked and received his closest advisers, away from the ceremonial chambers where public business was done. The windows look onto the courtyard, so the room is bright in the morning.
The Vasa kings moved the court to Warsaw in the early seventeenth century, and Wawel slowly became a residence for state occasions rather than daily life. When the castle was returned to Poland in nineteen hundred and five the private apartments were bare, and what you see is a careful reconstruction based on inventories, filled with objects bought or donated in the twentieth century. It is a good place to imagine the castle as a home rather than a monument.
Did You Know? The gilded birds that gave the room its name hung from the ceiling in the time of Sigismund the Third, a king who liked to paint and work gold in his spare time.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.