The Pauline church of St. Michael and St. Stanislaus, known to everyone as Skałka — "the little rock" — stands on the Stradom–Kazimierz border on the spot where, by tradition, King Bolesław the Bold had Bishop Stanisław of Szczepanów cut down at the altar in 1079. Stanisław became Poland's patron saint, and the site has been a place of pilgrimage ever since; the present church is a graceful Baroque rebuilding of the 1730s, fronted by a holy pool said to mark the martyrdom.
Its real significance today is downstairs. The crypt was turned in the 19th century into a national pantheon, the burial place of Poland's greatest cultural figures — the historian Jan Długosz, the painter Stanisław Wyspiański, the composer Karol Szymanowski, and the Nobel laureate poet Czesław Miłosz among them. For Poles it is hallowed ground; for visitors it is a quiet, moving counterpart to the royal tombs up on Wawel.