Kamienica Bonerowska, Kraków

Kamienica Bonerowska occupies number nine on Kraków’s Main Market Square: a protected historic townhouse also known as the Firlej House. It began as a Gothic residence, then received a Renaissance remodelling in the sixteenth century. Its dramatic crown was a nine-metre attic wall, decorated with gilded mannerist sculpture; mannerism here means an intentionally elaborate late-Renaissance style.

The attic was removed in the nineteenth century, but original carved herms—human figures merging into architectural supports—survived. They provided the model for the attic’s reconstruction in nineteen sixty-two, when the Gothic-Renaissance window frames of the first floor were recreated as well. The house passed from Seweryn Boner and his wife Zofia Betman to the Firlej family.

Henry the Third of France became godfather to Henryk Firlej here, and Maryna Mniszech married False Dmitry within this house. Find the passage running through the building: called Bielak Passage, it leads out to Stolarska Street. The townhouse entered the heritage register on the twenty-third of February, nineteen sixty-eight.