Modern man appeared in the regions of present Poland about 40,000 years B.C., while the records of the Slav tribes are to be found in ancient sources written in the 6th century A.D. In the 7th century A.D. the first defence settlements were built: Krakow (Cracow) was the most significant one in the basin of the Vistula River. The beginning of the Polish state goes back to the 10th century when the Piast Dynasty contributed to its development and prosperity, which lasted also throughout the Middle Ages.

Then in the reign of the monarchs from the Jagellonian Dynasty (15th, and 16th century in particular) Polish culture enjoyed its golden age: numerous grand residences, castles and palaces constructed then still amaze and fascinate the visitors: The Wawel Castle and Pieskowa Skala in the surroundings of Krakow (Cracow) are fine examples of then architecture. During the Renaissance tremendous advances in the sciences led to such discoveries as Copernicus' theory of the Universe. 

Krakow (Cracow) was the capital of Poland from the 11th to the beginning of the 17th century when Warszawa (Warsaw) rose to that status; however, coronation ceremonies and royal burials were still held in Krakow (Cracow).

At the beginning of the XVIth century, the Polono-lithuanian kingdom is the largest country in Europe. It spreaded on nearly a million km², from Riga in the north to the Crimea and the Black Sea in the south, and until Romanian Moldova and Smolensk in the East. The Polish ports were part in the powerful Hanseatic League and the kingdom was prosperous and powerful. It experienced during the Renaissance its greater artistic, architectural and scientific achievements with famous painters, sculptors and scholars of all Europe.