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 GOTHIC STYLE IN CRACOW ART the upper part and the roofing, is baroque in style. The basis, with its beautiful stone wainscotting, protrudes into the northern side aisle; here also a chapel was established. This tower, and the one called after King Sigismund, on the same side, originally belonged to the fortifications, and the wall that connects them has preserved this character to the present day.

At the western entrance of the cathedral, which is gained only by passing through a portal in a baroque wall and between two protruding Gothic chapels we find, on both sides of the baroque door, remains of Gothic sculpture, viz., images of St. Michael and St. Margaret, which are reliefs from the original portal; above the door we see the old cornice, and, on its stone escutcheon, the Poray arms of Bodzanta, who was bishop of Cracow at that time. On the western front gable-end, covered with stone slabs, there is a graceful rose-window, dodecagon in outline, with tracery of a design unusual in the North. Besides, we find on this front wall, above the rose-window, a Polish eagle carved in stone, and above this, standing on a corbel, a figure of St. Stanislas, flanked by two double-windows, with acute angles for arches; above the statue there is yet a little rhombic window. The ironwork on the entrance door is of the time of Casimir the Great and shows his initial, a crowned K.

The northern and the southern gable-end of the transept were characterized by great simplicity. They only show blank window-frames with little lancet-windows within them. The system of vaulting, and of the pillars which support it, is extremely original; it originated in the building of Wawel Cathedral and thence spread over the whole of Poland. In order to increase the carrying-power of the many-jointed pillars, and at the same time to avoid the flying-buttresses which did not stand the raw air of the country very well, a protruding abutment was joined on to the back of each pillar; in other words, the buttresses serving to counteract the lateral thrust of the vaulting, and generally placed on the outside of Gothic buildings, were here put into the church itself; they rise up