Kamienica Pod Obrazem, Kraków

Kamienica Pod Obrazem is a historic townhouse at number nineteen on Kraków’s Main Market Square, named for its façade painting of the Virgin Mary. Rebuilt across centuries and restored after the fire of eighteen fifty, it has housed Jan Wentzl’s restaurant and today contains Hotel Wentzl.

At number nineteen on the Main Market Square, Kamienica Pod Obrazem is the historic townhouse whose façade gives it its name. The painted image of the Virgin Mary on the façade was created during a restoration in seventeen eighteen, and the house became known as “Under the Painting.” This address reaches back to fifteen ninety-five.

Around the turn of the seventeenth century it belonged to the Cellari family from Milan, and Paweł Cellari rebuilt it in sixteen thirty-three. By the middle of that century, the Warszycki family, a senatorial line with estates at Danków and Pilica, owned the house. Its later owners included Maria Józefa Sobieska, widow of Prince Konstanty Sobieski, who bought it in seventeen thirty-five.

That connection gave the building another name: the Prince’s House. A devastating turn came with Kraków’s fire of eighteen fifty, when the townhouse burned; its restoration the following year completely recast the façade. Jan Wentzl later opened a restaurant here.

After the Second World War it was nationalised and operated as Restauracja pod obrazem, before closing in the nineteen seventies and eventually reopening. The Hotel Wentzl now preserves the restaurateur’s name. Since the twenty-ninth of September nineteen forty-seven, this townhouse has been protected as a historic monument.