Kamienica Pod Trójcą Świętą, Kraków

Kamienica Pod Trójcą Świętą is a protected historic townhouse at Stolarska 13 in Kraków’s Old Town. Its central ground-floor niche contains a sculptural Holy Trinity, and its long history includes a medieval refuge for poor widows, repeated fires, and nineteenth-century remodelling by Szczepan Humbert and Karol Budweiser.

Kamienica Pod Trójcą Świętą is the historic townhouse at Stolarska 13 in Kraków’s Old Town. Its name comes alive in the niche at the centre of the ground floor: look at the Holy Trinity group set there. God the Father sits enthroned and holds the crucifix; above Christ is the dove of the Holy Spirit, while a globe at God’s feet represents the universe.

This house reaches back to the thirteenth century. By the end of the fourteenth, it had an unexpectedly charitable role, housing Dominican tertiary sisters and providing refuge for poor widows. Fire destroyed it in 1455, and Katarzyna Michałowska funded its rebuilding soon afterward.

Its survival has never been straightforward. After the religious order was dissolved, the building was sold in 1816. Three years later, architect Szczepan Humbert designed a thorough reconstruction.

Another fire swept through Kraków in 1850, yet the townhouse was rebuilt that very year. Karol Budweiser bought it in 1863 and remodelled it again, creating the form you see today. The broad central projection running up the façade gives this two-storey, eleven-axis house its particularly formal face. Since 1966, it has held protected monument status.