Karol Wojtyła, who in 1978 became Pope John Paul II, the day after his ordination to the priesthood offered his first Mass as a priest at the Wawel Crypt on 2 November 1946, and was ordained Kraków's auxiliary bishop in the cathedral on 28 September 1958.

[2] Over the main altar stands a tall canopy of black marble supported by four pillars, designed by Giovanni Battista Trevano and Matteo Castelli between 1626 and 1629.

Underneath the canopy is placed a silver coffin of national patron Stanislaus of Szczepanów (also Stanisław Szczepanowski) created between 1669 and 1671 after the previous one (donated in 1512 by King Sigismund I the Old) was stolen by the Swedes in 1655.

A square-based chapel with a golden dome, it houses the tombs of its founder and those of his children, King Sigismund II Augustus and Anna Jagiellon (Jagiellonka).

He considered being buried at the Wawel Cathedral also at one point in time, while some of the people of Poland had hoped that, following ancient custom, his heart would be brought there and kept alongside the remains of the great Polish rulers.