Dom Józefa Mehoffera, Kraków

Dom Józefa Mehoffera is the National Museum in Kraków’s house museum for the artist Józef Mehoffer, at 26 Krupnicza Street. The building itself carries an earlier chapter of Kraków’s artistic life: Stanisław Wyspiański was born here in 1869, when it belonged to his grandparents, the Rogowski family. Józef Mehoffer bought the house in 1932, aged sixty-three.

After four years of renovation, he moved in with his family and designed the interior decoration himself. Notice the carved pinecones in the hall and stairwell: the Mehoffers affectionately called their home the “Little Palace beneath the Pinecones” because of them. The museum begins with an idea from Mehoffer’s son Zbigniew in 1963.

The family’s work made it possible to recreate the rooms from photographs, letters, memories, and guidance from Mehoffer’s grandchildren. It opened in 1996, with furniture, decorative arts, paintings, drawings, stained-glass designs, Japanese woodblock prints, and family keepsakes helping return the house to the atmosphere of the Mehoffers’ home. Across sixteen rooms, this is both an artist’s museum and a remarkably personal domestic world.