Kamienica Pod Gryfami, Wrocław

Kamienica Pod Gryfami is the historic townhouse on Wrocław’s Market Square, begun around the year thirteen hundred. Its gable makes the façade feel like a carved heraldic bestiary rather than a plain merchant’s house. On that gable, paired lions, griffins, eagles, and peacocks appear in stacked bands.

The griffins refer to the von Költsch coat of arms; the eagles hold shields for the von Tarnau and von Költsch families, and the peacocks evoke Apollonia von Tarnau. Conrad Költsch von Pruck, a dealer in furs and leather goods, ordered a sweeping reconstruction between fifteen eighty-seven and fifteen eighty-nine. The work adopted Dutch Mannerism, an elaborate late-Renaissance manner fond of sculptural display, and involved the city builder Friedrich Gross the Elder with the Dutch sculptor Gerhard Hendrik.

The richly worked sandstone entrance portal was made in fifteen eighty-eight. Notice its slanting surround and dense ornament: above it are heraldic shields belonging to Conrad and Apollonia. This house had a life beyond trade and display.

Theatre performances took place in a hall upstairs during the mid-seventeenth century. The grand gable, meanwhile, still preserves the identity of the family who transformed this medieval address.