Kamienica Pod Barankiem, Kraków

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.