
Stunning medieval ring found below rubble at 'historically important' tourist site
By Andrea Margolis
Published May 22, 2025
A remarkable centuries-old ring was unearthed recently beneath rubble at a historic castle in Eastern Europe.
The impressive brass ring was found at Wawel Royal Castle in Krakow, Poland. The castle's website describes it as "the most historically and culturally important site in Poland."
"For centuries the residence of kings and the symbol of Polish statehood, the castle is now one of the country's premier art museums," the website states.
ANCIENT TOMB TIED TO ROMAN GLADIATOR DISCOVERED BY ARCHAEOLOGISTS
"The collections of the Wawel Royal Castle are presented in several permanent exhibitions that evoke the historic appearance of the royal residence in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries."
The ring was excavated during the renovation of the Bastion of Władysław IV, a king who ruled Poland from 1632 to 1648.
Historians estimate that the piece of jewelry dates back to the 15th or 16th centuries.
A local archaeologist named Konrad Jurkowski found the ring, according to castle officials.
EXPERTS SHOCKED BY ANCIENT KING ARTHUR MANUSCRIPT FOUND TUCKED INSIDE BOOK: 'SURVIVED THE CENTURIES'
"It was found while sifting through the rubble fill from inside the monument's pedestal," the post, which was translated from Polish to English, read.
Pictures posted by Wawel Royal Castle show the intricate details of the ring, as well as the rubble-filled chamber that it was found in.
In one close-up photo, the mysterious symbols on the ring are clearly visible.
For more Lifestyle articles, visit foxnews.com/lifestyle
"The signet ring features an oval shield," the Facebook post noted.
"A symbol is visible on it, possibly a craftsman's mark, located on a German-type heraldic shield. "
The statement added, "The letters IC (initials?) are also visible. The item has a surface decorated with transverse grooves."
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER
Officials say that the ring will be "studied along with other finds after the completion of archaeological work on the Bastion of Władysław IV."
The latest discovery is one of several historical finds in the past year.
In January, archaeologists announced the discovery of coins, jewelry and other 1,200-year-old treasure in a set of Viking graves in Norway.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
In England, hundreds of 1,000-year-old silver coins were found at a nuclear power plant construction site in January. Print Close
URL
https://www.foxnews.com/travel/stunning-medieval-ring-found-rubble-historically-important-tourist-site
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Gas workers in Peru stumble across 1,000-year-old mummy: See photos
Peruvian workers clearing the way for new gas pipes stumbled across a mummy that archaeologists have since determined to be approximately 1,000 years old. The mummified remains were discovered not even two feet beneath the Earth's surface in Peru's capital of Lima. reported the Associated Press. Workers for the gas company Cálidda initially unearthed a makeshift tomb maker fashioned from the trunk of a huarango tree in June, under which a child-sized body was found sitting upright, wrapped in cloth and surrounded by ceramics, rope and food items. Archaeologists believe the well-preserved remains belonged to an adolescent, aged between 10 and 15 years old, of the pre-Inca Chancay culture, Cálidda said in a Facebook post. Dark hair and pieces of skin were still attached to the body, which Jesus Bahamonde, archaeologist and scientific coordinator for Cálidda, told AP and the Agence France-Presse was likely buried between 1000 and 1200 CE. Because discoveries of this nature are common in Peru, utility companies are generally required to have archaeologists on staff to oversee digs. "Great stories aren't just told: they're lived, discovered, and shared," Bahamonde said in a LinkedIn post, translated from Spanish, about the discovery. "This is a new story added to the more than 2,200 archaeological remains discovered along our path. Millennia-old testimonies that lie beneath our streets, waiting to be interpreted with respect and returned to the collective memory." The Chancay culture flourished from around 1000 to 1470 CE, before later being absorbed into the Inca Empire, according to the University of Missouri's Museum of Art and Archaeology. The coastal Chancay civilization is recognized by archaeologists for its people's accomplishments in producing distinct ceramics and textiles. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: See photos of 1,000-year-old-mummy discovered in Peru


CNN
2 days ago
- CNN
These artists are racing to save forgotten photos of Lagos life
In the old photo studios of Lagos, Nigeria, negatives were being burned. No longer needed or wanted, they were too difficult to store, the subjects had moved on or died, and the photo labs that printed them had long since shuttered. Those that were not discarded or set alight were left to degrade in rice bags and cardboard boxes, the humid Lagos air slowly destroying the emulsion. When Karl Ohiri, a British Nigerian artist, first heard about this, he was shocked.'I was witnessing this history that was on the verge of being destroyed,' he told CNN. These analog photographers captured life in Lagos from the 1960s to the early black and white portraits of young men in their bell bottoms, to a woman praying in front of a backdrop of the Islamic holy city of Mecca, to color photos of people showing off their new cassette players, the images these photographers made were a glimpse into Nigeria's biggest city before the advent of digital photography. However, they had never been digitized or archived — there were no backups. In countries like the UK, Ohiri said, museums might have taken the photos, adding them to their vast archives; London's V&A Museum has 800,000 photos in its collection and the National Portrait Gallery has 250,000. But in Lagos, Ohiri explained, 'there wasn't anywhere to house them.' Ohiri and his partner Riikka Kassinen launched Lagos Studio Archives to save the collections. They have spent the last nine years hunting down studios and photographers, cataloguing their archives, and creating exhibitions of the work. It has not always been easy. 'Lagos moves fast,' Kassinen explained; many of the photographers have since died, their studios torn down and new developments built in their place. There is sometimes so little trace of the studios that 'it's almost like (they) never happened,' said Ohiri. Even if the pair could find the photographers, sometimes they were too late. 'We've gotten to some photographers who had three or four decades of work that doesn't exist anymore,' Ohiri said. 'All of that history and heritage and there's nothing left… it takes all of that time to amass, and just half a second to put some kerosene on it and light it up and that's it. Just gone.' Initially, many of the photographers did not understand their interest. 'They just thought we were crazy,' Ohiri said. Now they have the work of at least 25 photographers in the archive, though they cannot be sure of an exact number as some of the troves they were given contained multiple photographers' work. Nor do they know how many negatives are in the collection, only that it is in the hundreds of thousands, piling up in Ohiri and Kassinen's studio in Helsinki, Finland. 'We might not be able to (digitize) everything in our lifetimes,' Ohiri conceded. The '70s was a period of rapid change in Nigeria. The country's civil war had ended, Nigerian oil had boomed, and an increasingly urban population was enraptured by Fela Kuti's Afrobeat. Photo studios became a place for people to document their everyday lives, show off their accomplishments and celebrate events. 'It was a theater of dreams where people could really show their aspirations,' Ohiri said. In the midst of these social and cultural changes sweeping through Lagos was Abi Morocco Photos. Made up of husband-and-wife photographers John, who died in 2024, and Funmilayo Abe, Abi Morocco Photos worked from the early 1970s to 2006. First from a studio on Aina Street, and later moving, the pair took portraits at the studio, as well as visiting customers' homes, attending events and ceremonies, and shooting portraits in the streets. Ohiri and Kassinen recently curated an exhibition of the Abes' work from the 1970s at the Autograph gallery in London, and have plans for a photobook of the couple's work. The show followed the archive's inclusion in the New Photography Exhibition at New York's MoMA, in 2023. 'Archive of Becoming' was an experimental series of images, culled from damaged negatives. Ohiri and Kassinen had to wear masks to protect them from the fumes and mold that had grown on the discarded negatives as they painstakingly preserved them. Now the archive is planning a project on female photographers and they want to make the overall collection accessible to citizens of the megacity through books and exhibitions. Despite exhibiting the work around the world, the pair have never met any of the paying clients — the closest they have gotten is a friend who recognized their uncle in one of the pictures. They hope that people might one day recognize the scratched black and white portraits, the mold-stained faces, and time-faded colors, so that the thousands of negatives can become not just a document of the city, but 'a family archive of Lagos.'


Washington Post
2 days ago
- Washington Post
Srebrenica women bury loved ones but remain haunted by memories of 1995 massacre
SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Three decades after their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons were killed in the bloodiest episode of the Bosnian war, women who survived the Srebrenica massacre find some solace in having been able to unearth their loved ones from far-away mass graves and bury them individually at the town's memorial cemetery.