Collegium Maius: The Cloister of Copernicus

Why is it significant?

Step through the pointed Gothic portal into the enchanting courtyard of Collegium Maius and pause beside the covered stone well.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step through the pointed Gothic portal into the enchanting courtyard of Collegium Maius and pause beside the covered stone well. Look around at the arcaded Renaissance loggias, red-brick tracery, and decorative stone crests: you are standing inside Poland's oldest university building, purchased in fourteen hundred by King Władysław Jagiełło using jewelry bequeathed by his saintly wife, Queen Jadwiga.

The Jagiellonian University was founded in thirteen sixty-four, making it the second-oldest university in Central Europe after Prague. Between fourteen ninety-one and fourteen ninety-five, a young student from Toruń named Nicolaus Copernicus walked these very flagstones, studying mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy under professor Albert Brudzewski.

Inside the university museum rests the celebrated Jagiellonian Globe from fifteen ten: it is one of the oldest globes on Earth to feature the newly discovered continent of America, labeled with the Latin inscription America Terra Noviter Reperta.

Every two hours, the courtyard musical clock chimes as wooden figurines of Queen Jadwiga, King Jagiełło, and Copernicus march across the balustrade. Walk south along Kanonicza Street.