Master Twardowski

Twardowski, a Kraków nobleman, scholar and sorcerer, sold his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power, on one condition: the devil could take him to hell only in Rome. Twardowski avoided Rome by a wide margin, until one day he entered an inn called "Rome". The devil was waiting. As he lifted Twardowski into the air, the sorcerer began to sing a hymn to the Virgin Mary, and the devil had to let him go. Twardowski was left on the Moon, where he sits to this day and looks down on Kraków.

The legend has several Kraków addresses: Twardowski is said to have lived in a house on the Market Square and kept his workshop in the cellars of the Krzysztofory Palace. His mirror, in which he supposedly showed King Sigismund Augustus the ghost of his dead wife Barbara, hangs in a church in Węgrów in Mazovia. Mickiewicz wrote a ballad about him, Pani Twardowska, in which the sorcerer is saved by his own wife, of whom the devil is afraid.