Kamienica Sasinowska, Kraków

Kamienica Sasinowska, at Saint John Street eighteen in Kraków’s Old Town, is a historic townhouse protected as a monument. Its plastered façade carries an eclectic mix of decoration, while the entrance portal gives the building its most theatrical gesture. The house began in the later fourteenth century as a modest, single-storey dwelling, then gained a rear range and an upper floor during the fifteenth century.

Caspar Sasin purchased it in sixteen oh one, giving the house its present name. Sebastian Petrycy directed a major remodelling in the early seventeenth century, adding another storey and a sunken roof with a lantern. Notice the curving pediment above the portal: the entrance was renewed in seventeen fifty-three, and its shield bears the Ogończyk coat of arms amid carved leaves and shell-like ornament.

Prince Eugeniusz Lubomirski commissioned another transformation in eighteen seventy-three, when the street-facing part gained an added storey and a rebuilt stairwell. Metal gates arrived during changes made in nineteen thirty. Beneath this urban façade, medieval cellars retain vaulted chambers and old stone doorways. The house entered the heritage register on the nineteenth of February nineteen sixty-eight.