The text depicts the castle of the Lithuanian dukes in Vilnius, which was rebuilt successively by Alexander Jagiellon and, after its destruction, by Sigismund I and Sigismund Augustus, who was said to be 'particularly fond of Vilnius' (Source: Tygodnik Illustrowany, Warsaw 1872, Series 2, T:10, pp. 192-193, after: University of Łódź Digital Library).

A modernised reading of the text.

The Castle of the Dukes of Lithuania in Vilnius.

Vilnius, like any ancient city, has poetic legends about its foundation, telling of the tura killed by Gediminas, of his dream explained by the high priest Kryvek Kriveta, and so on. The legends usually contain a part of the truth, so whether the tur was the reason, or some other cause guided the thoughts of the founder, it was nevertheless accepted in history that Gediminas founded his first castle in 1322, on the mountain still called Zamková. From there, as the needs grew or the court became more populated and the tight top of the mountain could no longer accommodate everything comfortably, the castle of the Lithuanian dukes descended behind the Vilnelė and started to expand on the Sventorcha valley. From the 14th century there was an upper and lower castle, the first one was always made of walls, the second one was made of wood, but it was fortified and entrenched, then surrounded by a wall and connected to the upper castle by a staircase covered with a gallery. The lower castle, according to historians, with its surrounding buildings, the temple of Perkunas, the dwelling of the high priest and others, constituted a fortified castle, under the veil of the upper castle. It was called Krevay-pilis in Lithuanian, i.e. Kreva Castle, which gave rise to the Russian Kryvoy-grad and the Polish Kriy-grad. Actually, they were also fortresses in which the rulers rarely stayed. Both of them were frequently visited by the Teutonic Knights and demolished, but they must have been strong and spacious, since in the war of 1396 there were 14,000 people inside under siege. It was only during the reign of Alexander Jagiellon from 1494-1505 that the lower castle, rebuilt and splendidly furnished, was intended as a permanent residence for his wife Helena, daughter of Tsar Ivan Vasilevich. At that time, it was home to her numerous and splendid court, composed of the most prominent boyars and ladies from Moscow, while the queen, a fan of building, enlarged and embellished the castle. Several years later both castles were destroyed by fire; however, they were rebuilt by Sigismund I, and even better by Sigismund Augustus, who, as is well known, was particularly fond of Vilnius. Here he lived with Elisabeth, Archduchess of Austria, daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I, his first wife, who died in the Vilnius castle in 1545. It was here that the historical love drama with Barbara Radziwiłłówna, the beautiful widow of Gasztold, was played out, and many other historical events took place in this building. This was the most splendid era for the Lower Castle. Elegantly walled in the Italian style, it occupied a huge space with numerous buildings belonging to it, surrounded by walls and towers, and constituted a city separate from Vilnius, including the Lord's temples and all the necessary domestic buildings. We can get an idea of its form at this time from the view of Vilnius included in a contemporary work by Jerzy Braun entitled 'Theatrum Urbium'. There we see the upper castle with the ruins of St Martin's Church and with a few more towers, of which one remains. The lower one was built in a quadrangle; one side of it, abutting the castle hill, contained the royal and queen's flats separately, in a separate courtyard facing the cathedral. Further on, there was the treasurer's house, stables, outbuildings, the drabant's house, the prison, the lighthouse or lofty watchtower over the Neris itself, stables, kennels, the arsenal, the tent storehouse, and so on. The whole square was divided in the middle by walls and had three courtyards, and a separate gallery led to the castle church. After the death of Sigismund Augustus, these buildings were only incidentally inhabited by the reigning monarchs. In the 18th century, a certain Constance, the second wife of Sigismund III, was a guest there for a time, and for this reason it was carefully renovated and embellished with Swedish marbles. Vladislovas IV, who came to Vilnius several times, still occupied the castle rooms, but other buildings began to be turned over to the public. Tribunals and various commissions sat in them, they were occupied by provincial governors or other officials, seizing separate buildings under various guises. Then the Swedish war of 1655-1661 ruined them so badly that they could not recover, and the castle gradually fell into decline, finally being completely demolished in 1797 and the following years. Before it was destroyed for the last time, the builder Ross took down the plan of the castle in 1793, which is known in copies in the collections and from which it can be seen that the Jagiellonian castle was surrounded by a wall until recent times. Apart from the residential buildings, the cathedral church of St Stanislaus and the chapel of St Casimir, connected with the castle by a gallery, also contained within its walls a convent of the Holy Family, a church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a retirement home, a custodian's house, an arsenal and others. Some of the buildings still standing inside the citadel are remnants of the walls of the lower castle, and the out-of-form projections of the old wall, looking out from inside the hill in the north-eastern part, are the last remnants of the staircase gallery which connected the upper castle with the lower one. At the end of the square there was a brick gate called "the castle gate", and not far from it there was a building of the Lithuanian tribunal, and later of the courts of the second department, which were demolished in 1836 and 1837, as well as the municipal and land archives adjacent to the castle gate