The mound was raised between 1820 and 1823 on Sikornik hill, in tribute to Tadeusz Kościuszko, who had died a few years earlier. It was built by public effort: residents of Kraków carried the earth themselves, and soil was brought from the battlefields of Racławice and Maciejowice, and from America.
In the middle of the nineteenth century the Austrians enclosed the mound within Fort No. 2, part of the Kraków fortress system. The fort now houses an exhibition on Kościuszko’s life. Beside it stands the chapel of Blessed Bronisława, a hermit who lived here in the thirteenth century, during the Mongol raids.
The summit gives a panorama of the whole city and, in clear weather, the Tatra mountains. Washington Avenue leads up to it, named in 1932 on the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Kościuszko’s friend.