Kamienica Pod Gankiem, Kraków

Kamienica Pod Gankiem is the four-storey historic townhouse at Sławkowska 6, in Kraków’s Old Town. Its name remembers a balcony-gallery that once projected from the grand façade, although that feature has not survived. The house you see is really the outcome of a long merger.

Two separate Gothic houses occupied this plot in the Middle Ages: the southern one began around thirteen hundred, and the northern one in the middle of the fourteenth century. By the later seventeenth century they belonged to one owner, K. Krauz. In the early nineteenth century, W. Giersz’s design physically joined them and added the third upper floor, creating the single townhouse before you.

Notice the façade’s broad central projection. It is classical in character, meaning it draws on the balanced, formal language of ancient architecture. The central windows carry triangular caps on the first floor and horizontal mouldings above on the second, while the outer windows are deliberately plain.

Inside survive Gothic stone ceiling brackets, and the upper floors retain large decorated rooms. The building entered the heritage register on the seventh of April nineteen sixty-six.