User:Wojciech.pospula/sandbox/Celestat

On 21 July 1837, thanks to support from Józef Wawel-Louis marksmen’s society bought from Maurycy Samelsohn so called Ogród Steinkellerowski, Steinkellerowski's garden. On 15 October 1837 the opening ceremony along with shooting torunoment was held in the new headquarters of Marksmen Guild's residence as is also today.

Celestat, the building's name originates from Old Germianic language Zielstätte meaning shooting range. It has been build in a very short time, only 5 months - from June to October in 1837 in Rifle Garden. The authors of neo-gothic construction in Kraków are Tomasz Majewski and Franciszek Lanci.

‘Shooting Range’, exhibiting the ‘History of Kraków’s Marksmen’s Confraternit

The opening ceremony was 15th October of 1837. At the turn of 1874/1975, architect Adam Nowicki on the order of guild, expanded Celeste. First it became an impressive Rifle Room, and then it was the greatest ballroom in Kraków. In Celeste rifle keepsakes were collected, guests were entertained (twice Emperor Franz Joseph I, his son archduke Rudolf, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, gen. Józef Haller, marshal Józef Piłsudski, Polish presidents Stanisław Wojciechowski and Ignacy Mościcki), and most the importantly guild's rituals like election of the guild's king were continued. The launch of World War II deprived the Guild of Celeste and Rifle Garden. They were seized by the Germans. Also at that time, Germans had setup a delousing station there for the soldiers returning from the eastern front. After the war, the new Polish government had refused to hand over the property to Marksmen Guild despite its dissolution in 1957. In 1990, the Rifle Garden and Celeste estate was finally returned to its legitimate owner. By virtue of Museum of History and rifle Fellowship historical agreement, a branch of Museum of History was created in Celeste with Kraków Marksmen Guild History exhibition which opened on the 21st of June 1997 honoring the 160th anniversary of Garden's opening.

Gallery
In the early 14th century masonry fortifications walled in whole the founded city. The baileys were widened for the just reconstructed fortifications of the ancient suburbia on the north side of the Wawel Castle hill during the reign of the Casimir III the Great (1333-1370).

In 1806 Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, the Austrian emperor’s, decided to demolish all of Krakow’s baileys. They were being taken down between 1810 – 1814 and in the first years of the Intependent City of Kraków. The St. Florian Baileys survived only thanks to strong intervention of architect, professor of the Jagiellonian University and senator of the Independent City of Krakow - PL:Feliks Radwanski (1756–1826).