Kamienica Pod Barankiem, Kraków

Kamienica Pod Barankiem is a historic townhouse at 22 Floriańska Street in Kraków’s Old Town. First built in the fifteenth century with timber and masonry, it was extensively remodelled in 1880 and given its present ground-floor portal in 1908. Its formal neoclassical façade is protected as a heritage monument.

Kamienica Pod Barankiem is the historic townhouse at 22 Floriańska Street in Kraków’s Old Town. Its three-storey façade has been shaped by rebuilding in 1880, alterations to the ground floor in 1908, and later conservation work. The house began in the fifteenth century as a structure combining masonry and timber.

In 1682, an official inspection commissioned by its owner Jan Pfaff found a building in serious trouble: the street façade leaned outward and most of the roof tiles were broken. Repairs followed near the end of that century, when a wooden rear wing was also added. The thorough remodelling of 1880, designed by Karol Żychoń, added the second floor and linked the front house to its rear wings with a covered passage.

The ground-floor portal you see was installed in 1908 to a design by M. Krawczyński. Notice its plain stone frame against the more formal upper storeys.

Their neoclassical decoration borrows the orderly language of ancient Greek and Roman architecture: pilasters mark one vertical section, while the first-floor windows carry pediment-like cornices and friezes. The building entered the heritage register on the fifteenth of June 1967.