Municipal Arsenal

In 1565-1566 King Sigismund Augustus (Zygmunt August) finished the construction of a second arsenal in Kraków. To distinguish it from the Royal Arsenal that had at that time been standing by the Grodzka Gate for 30 years, the new one was called Miejski: municipal or city. Its situation within the defence walls, between the Joiners' and Carpenters' Towers, at the back of the Barbican which projected out from the lines of defence was no coincidence. It was here, from the north, that the threat to the city was always greatest.

Its architect Gabriel Słoński designed and built a single-storey construction with a large hall where weapons and cannon were stored under the barrel vaulting. Barrels with gunpowder were stored in deep cellars, and the adjacent rooms must have housed the foundry.

The municipal arsenal managed to survive the demolition of the defence walls early in the 19th century only thanks to the intervention of Senator Feliks Radwański. For a time it stood abandoned and it was only in 1854-1861 that it underwent a thorough reconstruction to house storerooms and barracks. It was then that it received the form of a neo-Renaissance Italian castello.

Soon, the municipality presented this section of the fortifications to Prince Władysław Czartoryski. The building was adapted to Czartoryski's needs by Maurice Ouradou. First it held a library, and later the Princess Czartoryski Museum to which the arsenal belongs to this day.