Picture of the day for November 17, 2016
Picture of the day on November 17, 2016: Round view of the interior of the Royal Gniezno Cathedral, located in the historical city of Gniezno, old capital of Poland (before Kraków and Warsaw) located in the Greater Poland Voivodeship. The cathedral served as the coronation place for several Polish monarchs and as the seat of Polish church officials continuously for nearly 1000 years. Throughout its long and tragic history, the building stayed mostly intact making it one of the oldest and most precious sacral monuments in Poland. The religious temple dates back to the end of the ninth century, when an oratory was built in the shape of a rectangular nave. At the end of the tenth century Duke Mieszko I of Poland built a new temple on a cruciform plan and remodeled the existing nave oratory. Prince Bolesław I the Brave, later the first king of Poland, rebuilt the temple according to the plan of a rectangle, elevating it later to the rank of a Cathedral.