Kamienica Hetmańska, Kraków

At Main Market Square seventeen, Kamienica Hetmańska carries an eighteenth-century-style face over one of Kraków’s oldest secular brick buildings. The masonry at its base reaches back to the late thirteenth century, while much of the street-facing wall was already standing in the first half of the fourteenth. A major medieval enlargement created grand interiors: below, a hall rests on four pillars; above it, a ceremonial Gothic room was built with cross-rib vaulting.

That upper room holds its real surprise. Its carved vault bosses include the head of King Casimir the Great, a female head possibly representing Elizabeth of Łokietek, and the coats of arms of lands belonging to the Polish Crown. There are also bearded elders, a mother dog with puppies, and a coiled dragon.

This exceptional heraldic display and the house’s size have led scholars to connect it closely with royal authority, most often as a town residence for the king. The name comes from the Branicki family, owners from after 1659, including Grand Crown Hetman Jan Klemens Branicki. In 1733 he commissioned Jan Zygmunt Deybel to redesign the building.

It also bears the alternative name Old Mint: the sixteenth-century owner Kasper Beer held the right to strike coins. After a city fire in 1850, the house gained another storey; later restoration partly returned its eighteenth-century appearance.