History
The Sigismund Bell was commissioned for the Wawel Cathedral by Sigismund I, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. It was cast by Hans Behem (or Beham) of Nuremberg in 1520. Behem set up a special foundry near Kraków's Florian Gate where he is said to have used scrap metal taken from the cannons captured by Polish–Lithuanian forces from the Muscovite army in the Battle of Orsha in 1514. A similar and clearly incorrect legend identifies the source of metal as the battle of Obertyn (1531). The bell was installed in the Sigismund Tower and rung for the first time on 13 July 1521.
Apart from major religious and national holidays, the bell was rung on some of the most significant moments in the history of Poland, including the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, on the eve of Poland's entry into the European Union on 30 April 2004, on the occasion of each visit by Pope John Paul II, and after the plane crash which killed President Lech Kaczyński and dozens of other high-ranking officials on 10 April 2010. It also tolled during funerals or reburials of several great Poles, such as Adam Mickiewicz (1900), Marshal Józef Piłsudski (1935), General Władysław Sikorski (1993), Pope John Paul II (2005), and Lech Kaczyński with his wife (2010). It rung defiantly on Polish national holidays in the times of partitions (1795–1918) and under the communist regime (1945–1989), thus reinforcing its role as a national symbol.
Hans Frank, the governor-general of Nazi German-occupied Poland, had the Sigismund bell rung in 1940 to celebrate the German victory over France. After the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953, Poland's communist authorities demanded that the bell be rung as a sign of mourning. When the cathedral's bell-ringers refused, soldiers were ordered to ring the bell instead, or – depending on the source – it was rung by a group of Communist activists.
On at least one occasion, the bell was also rung as a juvenile prank. In 1882, according to several memoirists, Stanisław Estreicher, Józef Mehoffer, Henryk Opieński, and Stanisław Wyspiański – then in their high school years – sneaked onto the Sigismund tower and managed to toll the bell. When Wyspiański was caught, the bishop wished him that Sigismund ring at his funeral – which actually happened in 1907. An experiment conducted in 2011 to verify the plausibility of this anecdote showed that four teenagers would have been unable to toll the bell properly, but they could have swung the clapper enough to make a ringing sound.
The original iron clapper made about 12 million strokes during the 479 years of its history. During the 19th century, it broke and underwent repairs in 1859, 1865, and 1876. After it broke again on 25 December 2000, it was replaced by a new one – paid for and cast by Kraków metallurgic companies – on 14 April 2001.
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