It’s already a century since Kraków’s creative genius Stanisław Wyspiański passed away, yet his presence remains almost everywhere you look in the city. As well as his tireless efforts for the city and Poland in general as a painter, playwright, poet and more besides, Stanisław Wyspiański also found time to apply his talents to the field of architecture. Fascinated with Wawel since childhood, Wyspiański took advantage of the occupying Austrian army’s plans to move their barracks out of Wawel to completely redesign the complex. His so-called Wawel-Akropolis, designed over the winter of 1904-1905 with the help of the Polish architect Władysław Ekielski (1855-1927), sought to radically alter Wawel with the addition of scores of new buildings, towers, chapels and even an amphitheatre, the finished effect somehow managing to recreate a vision of a once mighty Poland. Wyspiański’s failing health and subsequent death two years later meant that his greatest project unfortunately never left the drawing board. Using the original designs, a fabulous model of Wawel-Akropolis was made in the early 1980s and is on permanent display in the Wawel Room inside the city’s superb Wyspiański Museum.