Kamienica Fontanowska, Kraków

Kamienica Fontanowska is the historic townhouse at twelve Main Market Square, within Kraków’s Old Town. The façade now gathers what had once been separate Fontanowska and Gutteterowska houses. General Henryk Dembiński acquired them and had them joined during the period from eighteen twenty-six to eighteen thirty, creating their shared exterior.

Part of this address reaches back to the early fourteenth century, while another portion belonged to the Fontani family in the later Renaissance era. The building’s fortunes have been unusually changeable: it burned in Kraków’s great fire of eighteen fifty and the Mączyński family rebuilt it. Its rooms have held a confectioner, a wartime workshop making uniforms for the German army, and the Wanda fashion house. Notice the long, composed street front: it conceals a history assembled from several lives.