Sigismund's Column

Sigismund’s Column rises twenty-two meters above Castle Square, crowned by a bronze statue of King Sigismund the Third Vasa. The king wears knightly armor and holds a sword in his right hand and a cross in his left, standing atop a Corinthian shaft that serves as the oldest secular monument in the city. Erected in sixteen forty-four by the king's son, Władysław the Fourth, the monument originally provoked controversy because it honored a secular ruler in a manner typically reserved for saints.