Before the Zoological Garden in Kraków was established, a royal menagerie had existed on the Wawel Hill in the Middle Ages.

When King Sigismund III Vasa transferred the capital of Poland from Kraków to Warsaw in 1596, the menagerie experienced a period of decline.

The activists of the Kraków branch of the Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists Wincenty Wober, Kazimierz Maślankiewicz, Leon Holcer, and Karol Łukaszewicz conceived the idea to establish a zoological garden in Kraków and to locate it in Las Wolski, near the Camaldolese Hermit Monastery in Bielany.

[5] The opening of the zoo took place on 6 July 1929, in the presence of President of Poland Ignacy Mościcki.

[7] Other animals born in captivity in the zoo include: maned wolf, snow leopards, leopards, jaguars, fennec foxes, caracal lynxes, European wild cats, northern lynxes, ground cuscuses, black mangabeys, chimpanzees, lar gibbons, and common marmosets.