The Hen's Foot Tower
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
Walk around to the north east corner of the castle and look up at the oddly shaped Gothic pavilion that seems to grow out of the wall on a cluster of buttresses. This is the Hen's Foot, so called because its stone supports reminded people of a chicken's foot pressed against the hillside. It is one of the few parts of the medieval castle that survived the Renaissance rebuilding, and it gives you a sense of what the residence of the first Jagiellonian kings looked like before the Italians arrived.
The tower was built in the fourteenth century under Casimir the Great and enlarged by Władysław Jagiełło and his successors in the fifteenth. Inside are small vaulted chambers and a chapel that formed part of the royal private quarters, and their pointed windows and ribbed vaults are pure Gothic. The lower levels now hold part of the Crown Treasury and Armoury, so you can walk through the medieval interiors as part of that exhibition. From outside, note how the Renaissance wings simply wrap around the older tower rather than replacing it.
Next to it stands the Danish Tower, built in the same period and named after the Danish king who was once a guest here. Together they form the most picturesque corner of the castle, best seen from the path that runs between the castle and the Cathedral. The Hen's Foot was also the setting for one of the most famous royal decisions in Polish history, since the private chambers here were where kings consulted their advisers away from the great halls.
Did You Know? The tower gets its name from the cluster of buttresses beneath it, which medieval Cracovians thought looked like a chicken's foot.
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