500 Zlotys Ladislaus I the Elbow-high

Władysław I Łokietek — "the Elbow-high," so called for his reportedly short stature — reunified a fragmented Polish kingdom after decades of Bohemian occupation and dynastic chaos, receiving a papal coronation at Kraków in 1320 that restored the Polish crown for the first time in over a century. This issue belongs to the long-running Royal Series launched by Mennica Polska in the 1970s and 80s, which worked systematically through Poland's monarchs during a period when the communist government found dynastic history a safer form of nationalism than more recent subjects.