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Tomb of Casimir IV: they opened Wawel and the mourning began

Krakow, 1973: they open the tomb of a king. In two years, four of their own die. Curse, coincidence or a fungus?

2 min read
Tomba di Casimiro IV: aprirono Wawel e iniziarono i lutti

The two-centimeter hole

Krakow, Wawel hill. Friday, April 13, 1973. In the cathedral, a drill works on the wall of a crypt. It is not the king's that interests the scholars, but the adjacent chamber: the hole starts from the tomb of Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki and must cross about ninety centimeters of stone. When the tip comes out the other side, the hole measures just two centimeters. This is told by the diary of Stanisław Kozieł, chief archaeologist of Wawel, cited by journalist Zbigniew Święch.

On the other side is Casimir IV Jagiellon, King of Poland. According to Kozieł himself, no one had ever entered that chamber since the day of the funeral. Almost five centuries have passed.

However, the hole shows nothing. They try with a small lamp, then try again. The men working that day are archaeologists, conservators, art historians, and engineers of the Royal Castle. Within two years, four names linked to that site will appear in obituaries and then in a book.

To understand why that wall mattered so much, you first need to know who was sleeping behind it.

A king sculpted while dying

Casimir IV was Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1440 and King of Poland from 1447. In 1454 he married Elizabeth of Austria. Under him, Poland won the Thirteen Years' War against the Teutonic Knights and, according to the Polish press, brought the Pomerania of Gdańsk back under the crown after 158 years. He died in 1492, in Grodno, in present-day Belarus, and was buried in Krakow in July of that year.

His tomb is a masterpiece of late Gothic art. The work is by the German sculptor Veit Stoss, known in Polish as Wit Stwosz, who worked on it from 1492 to 1496. The red marble comes from Adnet, near Salzburg. On the sarcophagus, under a canopy of arches, lies the statue of the sovereign. And it is an unusual statue: the king does not have the composed face of stone rulers, but is caught in agony, with the cloak used only for coronations. The sculptor's signature is under the feet of the figure.

In 1505 Queen Elizabeth also died and was buried next to him. For almost five centuries, under that marble, in the Holy Cross chapel of the Wawel cathedral, remained a sealed chamber.

Until the spring of 1973. What convinced someone to break its peace?

The cardinal's permission

Between 1972 and 1973 the chapel was under restoration. To decide how to intervene on the monument, it was necessary to know the condition of the chamber underneath. The opening was authorized for scientific purposes by the Archbishop of Krakow, Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II. Before Casimir's tomb, his wife's tomb had already been opened.

After the hole on April 13, on May 7, 1973, a stone block was removed from the wall and scholars were able to inspect the chamber. According to Kozieł's report cited by Święch, it was that morning. Sources mention a team of twelve people who took care of the opening and surveys.

Inside were rotten wooden coffins and the remains of the two sovereigns. The examinations continued until autumn.

However, what was inside was much poorer than Stoss's marble.

A leather crown

The 1492 funeral, judging by what emerged in 1973, was sober. The body was wrapped in fine cloth. The crown was made of gilded leather. The scepter was wooden and the orb was leather, stuffed with horsehair. Only the sword was authentic, but rust had badly damaged it.

The insignia can be seen today in the Treasury Museum of the Wawel Cathedral, and the study results were published in scientific journals. So far, this is history, and documented history.

On October 18, 1973, according to Polish newspapers, the remains of the king and queen were placed in new coffins in the restored chapel. Present were Primate Stefan Wyszyński and Cardinal Wojtyła. Some English sources indicate September 18 instead: the sources do not agree on the date, and it is worth mentioning.

The scientific work was concluded. The part of the story that readers remember begins the following year, in April.

Four names

The first to die, according to the Polish press, was Feliks Dańczak, architect of Wawel. It was April 12, 1974, one day before the first anniversary of the hole in the wall. The cause was a stroke, a cerebral hemorrhage.

On June 28, 1974, Stefan Walczy died, identified as the main conservation specialist of Wawel. On August 6 of the same year, it was Kazimierz Hurlak's turn, whose surname also appears as Hulak, responsible for the architectural laboratory. On May 17, 1975, Jan Myrlak died, head of the construction department of Wawel: the same engineer who, according to one source, had devised the lamp mounted on a rod to peek into the chamber.

According to Święch, they were middle-aged men in good health. This, and only this, is what the consulted texts say precisely: four names, four dates, one clearly stated cause, that of the first. For the others, one source generally speaks of cerebral hemorrhages or heart attacks.

Yet the story that soon circulated around Krakow spoke of many more deaths.

Ten out of twelve, or fifteen?

Here we need to separate what is known from what is told. Wikipedia and the University of Pennsylvania write that ten of the twelve team members died prematurely. The Polish newspapers Dziennik Polski and Gazeta Krakowska, instead, speak of fifteen people who worked on the restoration and died within ten years. These are two different counts: the first concerns a group of twelve, the second a larger group and a longer time.

None of the sources we consulted publish the complete list. The names are four. No reports, autopsies, or medical records are published. An informative review by Amusing Planet points this out: symptoms were described vaguely, there were no autopsies, and the evidence of a link to the fungus is weak.

Four deaths in just over a year, among men who had worked on the same site, are striking. But the total depends on who is counted, when counting starts, and what is considered related to the work. The sources do not specify.

What increased the list, and the fear, was especially a man who was not an archaeologist.

The journalist who gathered the rumors

According to Święch, Walczy warned his colleagues by recalling the case of Tutankhamun. In another version of the story, he was reading C. W. Ceram's book on the pharaoh's curse. In any case, the atmosphere changed after the deaths of 1974-1975: Krakow, writes Dziennik Polski, filled with rumors. Some spoke of coincidences and others of the king's revenge.

The reporter was Zbigniew Święch. Around 1975, about two years after the funeral, he heard about unexplained events around the tomb. For twelve years he collected materials. He spoke with microbiologists, archaeologists, and widows of the researchers. In 1989 he published "Curses, Microbes and Scholars," which became a bestseller and popularized the story.

The legend went around the world. According to Wikipedia, newspapers worldwide compared the Wawel deaths to those attributed to Tutankhamun's curse. In 1978 Wojtyła was elected pope and the footage of the 1973 burial became one of the few available about the new pontiff, which brought the episode back to the forefront.

However, the book's title already contained the key: among curses and scholars, there were microbes.

The yellow suspect

Microbiologist Bolesław Smyk identified the fungus Aspergillus flavus in samples from the tomb, known in Polish as kropidlak żółty. It is a mold that produces aflatoxins, toxic and carcinogenic substances. The hypothesis is that the spores, having remained for centuries in a closed environment, were released upon opening and inhaled. According to Dziennik Polski, those most exposed died first and others later.

The idea is not absurd. An article from Big Think recalls that Aspergillus flavus is among the main causes of aspergillosis in humans, a disease that mainly affects the lungs of those with weakened immune defenses. It cites a 1998 study by Sylvain Gandon, which showed how spores can remain dormant for centuries and remain potent.

But between hypothesis and proof there is a gap. Also according to Big Think, Smyk only hypothesized that the fungus "might have contributed" to the deaths. The first documented death was a stroke: Dziennik Polski claims the fungus can cause strokes, but the link is not proven. And according to Amusing Planet's review, a lethal dose of toxin would tend to kill quickly, not after months or years.

Is one fungus, found in a crypt, enough to explain ten or fifteen deaths?

From poison to cure

The story, at this point, takes a turn that no reporter in 1989 would have imagined. In June 2025, the University of Pennsylvania announced a study published in Nature Chemical Biology. It was led by Qiuyue Nie, first author, and Sherry Gao. The researchers isolated from Aspergillus flavus a new family of molecules, aspergimicines.

Two of the four purified variants acted strongly against leukemia cells. One variant with an added lipid showed effectiveness comparable to two drugs already approved in the United States, cytarabine and daunorubicin. The next step is tests on animal models, with hopes to eventually reach human studies. The university's press release cites as an example the tomb of Casimir IV, and states that Aspergillus flavus was found there.

The Wawel fungus came back into the spotlight later as well. In 2007, when colonies of microorganisms were noticed under Krakow's Market Square, an article in the Kraków Post recalled Casimir's "curse." The excavation leader, Professor Ireneusz Pluska, called the phenomenon "completely natural," while city authorities complained about rumors circulating before verification.

Mold can kill. Mold can cure. And a legend, apparently, can survive both.

The question that remains

Let's take stock. Documented are: the 1973 opening, the findings, at least four deaths between April 1974 and May 1975, the identification of Aspergillus flavus by Smyk. These are hypotheses: that the fungus killed someone. These are stories: the "king's revenge," the comparison with Tutankhamun, the growing number of victims.

And there are gaps. We do not know the complete list of the dead. We do not know their medical records. We do not know for sure when the king was buried again. The book that fixed the story is a journalistic work, not an epidemiological study.

Perhaps the king did not take revenge on anyone. Perhaps there was no killer fungus, just a crypt closed for five centuries and a group of men aging together. Yet there remains a question, and it is the one that brings people back to the red marble tomb: if everything is so explainable, why does the story of the Wawel deaths keep arising every time someone opens a door closed for centuries?

THE RATIONAL EXPLANATION

A group of middle-aged men who worked together on a site can suffer multiple losses over years even by pure statistics. The fungus Aspergillus flavus, found in the tomb, is a plausible but unproven hypothesis: autopsies and public clinical data are missing. The fame of Tutankhamun and the presence of Wojtyła did the rest.

Sources