Kamienica Pod Złotą Gwiazdą, Wrocław

Kamienica Pod Złotą Gwiazdą is the townhouse before you, occupying the eastern run of buildings on Wrocław’s Market Square. Its present form dates from 1914, and it is protected as an immovable heritage monument. At the entrance, notice the arched portal and the wrought-iron grilles: these decorative metalwork pieces at the doors and windows survived the wartime destruction and subsequent reconstruction.

The building was designed by the Berlin practice Bielenburg and Moser in a Northern Renaissance manner, borrowing the elaborate visual language of that earlier era. The house takes its name from a star device displayed on an earlier façade, positioned between the second and third bays at the level between the first and second storeys. That earlier house had been built late in the eighteenth century.

The address also belonged to the Heimann banking story: Ernst Heimann began a small banking office in rented space here, and his growing business later moved next door. War destroyed the house in 1945; its rebuilding deliberately returned it to its prewar appearance. From 1949, it housed a cooperative bank serving small and medium-sized businesses.