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Europe · High and late Middle Ages

Grand Duchy of Kraków

drawn on the map 1279–1293

Kraków and its province were the indivisible seat of the senior/High Duke under the 1138 testament — whoever held Kraków held nominal primacy over Poland. Possession of Kraków was therefore the great prize of the fragmentation wars, and its holder eventually restored the kingdom; Kraków remained the royal capital and coronation city into the 16th century.

Shown on the map
1279–1293
Peak area
27k km²
Region
Europe

Overview

Kraków and its province were the indivisible seat of the senior/High Duke under the 1138 testament — whoever held Kraków held nominal primacy over Poland. Possession of Kraków was therefore the great prize of the fragmentation wars, and its holder eventually restored the kingdom; Kraków remained the royal capital and coronation city into the 16th century.

Common questions

What was the Grand Duchy of Kraków?
Kraków and its province were the indivisible seat of the senior/High Duke under the 1138 testament — whoever held Kraków held nominal primacy over Poland. Possession of Kraków was therefore the great prize of the fragmentation wars, and its holder eventually restored the kingdom; Kraków remained the royal capital and coronation city into the 16th century.
When is the Grand Duchy of Kraków shown on the map?
The border data draws the Grand Duchy of Kraków 1279–1293. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
How large was the Grand Duchy of Kraków?
At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Grand Duchy of Kraków covered about 27,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.

Sources

This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each territory as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia, academic works (John Fine on the Balkans, Halperin and Martin on Muscovy, Rady and Veszprémy on Hungary) and, for a few entries, the medieval Livonian Chronicle of Henry itself. The article this entry is anchored on:

This entry was last updated .

This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made

Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.

Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).

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