Kalwaria Zebrzydowska park
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How it came to be
In 1600 Mikołaj Zebrzydowski, Voivode of Kraków, built a Chapel of the Crucifixion on Żar hill in southern Poland for his own meditation. Bernardine friars persuaded him to expand it into a landscape of many chapels linked to the holy places of Jerusalem. The mathematician and surveyor Feliks Żebrowski laid it out on the model of Jerusalem in the time of Christ, with Żar standing for Golgotha. A 1584 reconstruction of Jerusalem by Adrichomius had encouraged such Calvary projects.
The church and friary were designed by the Italian architect Giovanni Maria Bernardoni and completed in 1609 by the Belgian architect Paul Baudarth. Baudarth also built most of the chapels, which show strong Dutch Mannerist influence; the majority went up between 1605 and 1632. From 1617 a town grew up to receive the pilgrims.
At Easter the friars and local people staged the Passion of Christ; the Austrian authorities discouraged the plays, but they were revived after 1947. After the Second World War the land was nationalised and there were efforts to limit pilgrimage. The complex became a protected monument in 1981 and was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1999. It is still a place of pilgrimage, and Pope John Paul II visited it several times.
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