Hello Silber,
I went to Krakow on holidays last year and visited parts of the castle. I found it was part Disneyland, part historical site. The Disneyland impression comes from the way they manage the myriad tourists who flock to the castle each day.
As I remember, there were two places to buy tickets (this was during the month of August), each had a big screen showing the number of tickets remaining
per part of the castle. You could see the number of available places going down at an alarming rate. All in all, a big surprise as to the mass of tourists, but a clear and well organized way to deal with it.
I can imagine locals avoid the holiday period to visit !
The armory was full of wonderful objects (I cannot judge quality at a glance but I took special notice of some very nice smallswords. It also included a few very, very, ornate ceremonial swords and a huge number of two-handed swords along with crossbows, cannon, etc .)
I was, like you, frustrated by the ban on photos, especially as they propose a beautiful book on the pole arms in their collection, but nothing on swords !! Why not allow photos without flash and contend with people who cannot understand simple rules ?
I must say I was interested enough that I would have stayed longer in the armory, but had to follow the rest of the family
Sorry about the layman quality of this post, but I haven't reached the level of expertise of people on this forum yet. Just my humble opinion on the subject. For all I know, most pieces could have been fake, but I doubt it
Benoit