Dom Wenecki, Kraków

Dom Wenecki is a modernist tenement house at number eleven on Kraków’s Main Market Square. Built between 1913 and 1917 by Adolf Siódmák, it stands tallest on the eastern side of the square. Its history includes a pharmacy, a spice warehouse, and the carp relief that gave the building its alternative name.

Dom Wenecki, at number eleven on the Main Market Square, is the tall modernist tenement house before you. It rose between 1913 and 1917 to a design by Adolf Siódmák, replacing much older buildings on this plot; the decision to demolish their above-ground storeys met opposition from architects and conservationists. The result is a multi-winged house whose façade is the tallest on the square’s eastern frontage.

Notice its lofty attic level and the balcony set into the lower two-storey section. Long before this rebuilding, a pharmacy operated here from 1527, and successive families of pharmacists owned the property. Between 1718 and 1744, the builder Franciszek Toriani owned it and ran a spice warehouse here—a reminder that the Market Square once handled medicines, imported seasonings, and much else besides.

The Venetian name comes from an unverified story that envoys of the Venetian Republic stayed here. A winged Lion of Saint Mark, formerly set into the courtyard wall, was once treated as proof. In the courtyard’s south wall, the house emblem is a carp relief, giving it its alternative name: the House beneath the Grey Carp. The building entered the heritage register on the eighth of December 1987.