Kamienica Dawidowska, Kraków

Kamienica Dawidowska, also known as the Łabędzki townhouse, stands at Floriańska Street number eight in Kraków’s Old Town. Its story reaches back to a house erected here in the fifteenth century. David Rottermell later raised the building by an additional storey.

On the third of July, seventeen forty-five, poor condition brought the house down entirely. A new townhouse followed within a few years, then successive owners repeatedly reshaped it. Notice the arched stone portal at street level: it is Neo-Gothic, a nineteenth-century revival of medieval forms.

The windows above carry triangular caps, while those higher up have projecting stone mouldings. Between the upper windows, an outline preserves the trace of a medieval opening. Inside, iron stairs with wooden treads survive from an eighteen eighty-seven design by Teodor Talowski. The building has held heritage protection since nineteen thirty-one.