Katownia, Gdańsk

Katownia, the Torture Chamber, is the fortified gatehouse linked with the Prison Tower; together they form the gateway complex of Długa Street. An earlier defensive structure here was finished in fourteen ten, when Gdańsk’s walls were expanding. When later fortifications changed its role, Anthonis van Obbergen rebuilt and enlarged the place between fifteen ninety-three and sixteen oh four.

It then held torture rooms, a court, and a prison, remaining the city’s jail until eighteen sixty-one. Follow the carved faces beneath the roof. Willem van der Meer made the decorative sculpture here, including a headless keyholder.

Another carved head was damaged during the fighting of nineteen forty-five, leaving its inner anatomy exposed in a startlingly literal way. Katownia did not remain solely a prison. It later passed to the Danzig Association of Artists, served as an antiques shop and a display of torture instruments, and became a Red Cross premises.

After reconstruction in the postwar decades, it housed the Amber Museum until that collection moved to the Great Mill. The building now belongs to the Gdańsk Museum.