Królewicz Władysław Zygmunt Waza na meczach piłki (calcio fiorentino) w lutym 1625 roku
ENThe article is devoted to Prince Władysław Sigismund Vasa’s visit to Florence in the early 1625 and football games of calcio Florentine he attended there. The prince watched the game that opened the football season, beginning on the 6th January. Calcio was a form of folk football, reserved for aristocrats, who transformed it into a highly formalized and less violent game played on the Piazza di Santa Croce. Games were played in the carnival. The article is based on the contemporary texts, such as a diary of Prince Albrycht Stanisław Radziwiłł, who was Wladyslaw’s guardian during the voyage, a Diarium peregrinationis Vladislai... by Jan Hagenaw of Moravia, a courtier of Radziwiłł in this voyage, who prepared an original of his diary for King Sigismund III, or a diary by Stefan Рас. On the occasion of the Polish prince’s visit there was a small pamphlet published, in several copies only, dedicated to the prince. It was probably a reprint of the late 16th-century text by Giovanni de Bardi, Discorso sopra il Giuoco del Calcio Fiorentino, containing the official rules of calcio. The rules of Florentine football game (Capitoli del Calcio Fiorentino) has 34 articles and were published in various old prints. Prince Władysław Sigismund Vasa did not bring the game to Poland. Instead, he introduced Italian opera, called dramma per musica, to the Polish court, where he financed, organised and watched sophisticated spectacles in Warsaw, Vilnius and Gdansk between 1628 and 1648.
