Dom Uphagena, Gdańsk

Dom Uphagena is the museum townhouse before you, rebuilt to evoke the home of an eighteenth-century merchant in Gdańsk. Its façade on Long Lane has a three-bay arrangement, several storeys, and attic levels. Johann Uphagen bought the property in seventeen seventy-five.

He was a prosperous merchant, historian, collector, and civic councillor, and he reshaped the house for an affluent household. The makeover followed Rococo, an ornate style favouring playful decoration; room panelling carries insects, flowers, birds, imagined ancient buildings, and scenes inspired by China. The house remained in the Uphagen family through succeeding generations.

Wartime destruction came during the Soviet advance in nineteen forty-five, after curators had moved furnishings to Kartuzy and Gorzędziej. Some original interior pieces returned during the early nineteen fifties. Reconstruction drew on surviving documentation to restore the eighteenth-century exterior and rooms, and the museum welcomed visitors again in nineteen ninety-eight. What makes this house remarkable is its survival as a visitor experience: only a small group of comparable eighteenth-century merchant homes in Europe can be entered.