The Wawel Dragon

It is said that the monster was defeated by trickery, when instead of a real animal it was fed calf skin stuffed with sulphur. Today, people come to Kraków every year to see the Dragon Parade, while soft-toy dragons and miniature copies of the Wawel Dragon Monument (erected on riverside in 1972) are sold in the stalls near the Castle and on the Market Square. Until a few decades ago, however, the most popular toys were wooden dragons with a wriggling lizard-like body. In the second half of the 20^th century, these wooden dragons were made to a design developed several decades earlier by the Kraków Workshops. At that time, in 1918, the prototype of the dragon-lizard was designed by the painter Zofia Stryjeńska, and is currently held in the collections of the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków.

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