Galeria Małgosia, Wrocław

Galeria Małgosia occupies one half of the little paired townhouses beside St Elizabeth’s Church at the Market Square’s north-west corner. The pair rose in the fifteenth century as homes for clergy connected with the parish church. The arch joins these compact buildings like a clasp.

It once led into the churchyard, later removed during the eighteenth century; the cartouche in the arch preserves a Latin thought: death opens the way to life. Małgosia, the taller house, was substantially reshaped in fifteen sixty-four. Its street-facing façade gained an additional storey, a gabled roof, stone surrounds for every window, and an elaborate late-Renaissance gable crowned with stone finials.

A ground-floor window retains a grille carrying crossed keys and a hammer, together with the date of that rebuilding. The familiar fairy-tale names are much newer than the houses. Polish newcomers after the war saw the linked pair as companions holding hands: the smaller Jaś beside the larger Małgosia.

Restoration later revealed Renaissance decoration, and the buildings became a home for Wrocław enthusiasts. Let the narrow arch frame the whole scene: a playful name, but a passage carrying the memory of a vanished cemetery.