Dom Włoski, Kraków

Dom Włoski is the historic townhouse at number seven on Kraków’s Main Square. The present building took shape when the Montelupi family transformed an earlier Gothic house between fifteen fifty-six and fifteen sixty-one. Its owner Sebastian Montelupi assumed control of Poland’s postal service in fifteen sixty-nine, turning this address into its headquarters.

Royal officials and Polish diplomats were among the post’s principal customers, but the most vivid connection is Venice: couriers regularly left from this gateway carrying letters on that long route. The first one set out in fifteen sixty-nine. Notice the commemorative plaque by the entrance; it was installed in nineteen sixty-nine, four centuries after that departure.

This was also a hub for Kraków’s Italian community. After the Montelupi line died out, the Cortini family owned the house, and in the later seventeenth century it passed to an Italian brotherhood formed by Italians living in Kraków. At the entrance, the decorative late-Renaissance portal leads into a large hall, where the Montelupi coats of arms survive on the vaulted ceiling.