Pod Baranami Palace in Kraków: A Renaissance and Baroque Urban Residence
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Poland
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Kingdom of Poland, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Elite Residence
On this page16 sections
History
Pod Baranami Palace in Kraków, Poland, is a historic urban residence on the Main Market Square, formed in the sixteenth century as a Renaissance palace from two Gothic townhouses. Its location at Main Market Square 27, at the corner of St Anne Street, places it within Kraków’s Old Town. The palace later acquired Baroque features, expanded through aristocratic ownership, and became a political, military, and cultural center.
Medieval Property and the Renaissance Palace
The traditional name Pod Baranami, meaning “Under the Rams,” is linked to a medieval inn where sheep intended for sale to Kraków residents were kept. The earlier name, “Where the Rams,” was represented by an emblem showing two rams joined at the head. After 1346, the property belonged to the estate of Paulin Cavallo, an Italian administrator of the Bochnia salt mine. Jan Lang of Karniów owned it from 1464 to 1486. From 1486, three-quarters of the property belonged to Jan Gawron and probably to Jan Kisling, the village head of Bronowice.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the inn was regarded as Kraków’s best-known establishment of its kind. Poets and writers, including Jan Kochanowski, Mikołaj Rej, and Łukasz Górnicki, frequently visited it. In the sixteenth century, Justus Ludwig Decius, a royal secretary associated with the Renaissance court of Sigismund I the Old, joined two Gothic townhouses to create a Renaissance palace. The Renaissance was a European artistic and architectural period that revived forms and ideas associated with classical antiquity.
Royal and Aristocratic Ownership
King Stephen Báthory acquired the palace in 1577 and gave it to Gaspar Bekes, the starost of Lanckorona, in 1579. A starost was a historical Polish-Lithuanian official who often exercised authority over a district or royal estate. The Hungarian Renaissance poet Bálint Balassi was said to have lived there during this period, and the palace was associated with the quartering of Hungarian infantry.
The property later passed to Katarzyna Ostrogska, née Lubomirska, and in the seventeenth century came to the Radziwiłł family. The Radziwiłłs enlarged the complex by incorporating another townhouse. Paweł Karol Sanguszko acquired the palace in 1709 through his second wife, Marianna of the Lubomirski family. Their son, Janusz Aleksander Sanguszko, received the Kraków palace and its entail in 1738. An entail was a legal arrangement that restricted the inheritance or disposal of an estate, usually keeping it within a designated family line.
Janusz Aleksander Sanguszko’s mismanagement led to the breakup of the entail, confirmed by the 1753 Kolbuszowa transaction. Hieronim Wielopolski then purchased the Kraków palace and remodeled it in the Baroque manner represented in a view by Franciszek Placidi. Baroque architecture followed the Renaissance and favored elaborate decoration, movement, and dramatic spatial effects. Wielopolski retained ownership until 1772.
The Potocki Residence
Artur Potocki bought the palace in 1822, beginning the period in which the Potocki family controlled it until the outbreak of the Second World War. During the 1846 Kraków Revolution, an uprising in the city, the residence housed the headquarters of the insurgent National Guard, a citizen military organization formed during the revolt. Elżbieta of the Branicki family, who was married to Zygmunt Krasiński from 1843 to 1859 and to Ludwik Krasiński from 1860, died in the palace on 15 May 1876.
At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Pod Baranami served as a meeting place and political center for Kraków’s conservative circles. It was also a center of the city’s social and cultural life. The Potockis assembled a collection that included paintings associated with Venetian, Dutch, and German schools, antique furniture, porcelain, and a large group of Polish kontusz sashes. A kontusz sash was a wide, elaborately woven belt worn with the formal clothing of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility. With the owners’ permission, the interiors could be visited.
The palace hosted Tsarevich Alexei of Russia in 1709, Józef Poniatowski in 1809, Frederick Augustus, King of Saxony and Duke of Warsaw, in 1810, and Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1880. Stanisław August Poniatowski also visited it at different times. During the First World War, the building housed a military hospital. In summer 1920, during the Polish-Soviet War, the conflict between Poland and Soviet Russia, Krystyna Potocka voluntarily made the palace available as a military hospital despite its exemption from the obligation to house one.
Occupation, Recovery, and Cultural Use
During the German occupation in the Second World War, the palace became the seat of the governor of the Kraków district. After the Red Army entered Kraków in January 1945, the building housed the Soviet military command, the headquarters of SMERSH, a Soviet military counterintelligence organization, and the NKVD command, representing the Soviet security and internal-affairs ministry.
In 1947, the building was transferred to Kraków House of Culture, which used it until 1990. The prewar owners recovered the property in August 1990, but a major fire the following day severely damaged part of the palace. Repairs continued for several years. The palace was entered in the register of historic monuments on 19 May 1947 under number A-41 and is also included in Kraków’s municipal register of historic monuments.
The cellars became the home of the cabaret Cellar under the Rams in 1956. It was established by the Polish actor and cultural figure Piotr Skrzynecki and remains associated with the palace. The studio cinema Kino Pod Baranami has operated in the building since 1969. In 2009, it received a distinction from the Europa Cinemas network for the best program among its member cinemas.
Remains
Pod Baranami Palace occupies a corner position on Kraków’s Main Market Square, with a second frontage on St Anne Street. Its present form brings together medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and nineteenth-century elements. The complex includes a gate, vestibule, internal courtyard, medieval cellars, and surviving architectural details from several periods of construction and alteration.
Medieval and Renaissance Fabric
Gothic Townhouses
The palace originated through the joining of two pre-existing Gothic townhouses. Remnants of those buildings survive in the cellars, in a Gothic chamber on the ground floor, and in the facades of the lower storeys around the internal courtyard. A nine-field rib vault survives in a ground-floor room to the right of the vestibule. A rib vault is a vaulted ceiling supported by projecting stone or masonry ribs that define and reinforce its structural bays.
Vestibule and Courtyard
The vestibule contains a vault dating from the first half of the sixteenth century. It leads into the palace complex, which includes an internal courtyard and the gate facing the Main Market Square. The sixteenth-century Renaissance arrangement was enlarged in the seventeenth century, when the Radziwiłł family incorporated an additional townhouse.
Baroque and Nineteenth-Century Alterations
Baroque Facades
Traces of eighteenth-century Baroque decoration remain visible on the external facades. The building chronology also includes work in 1780 and alterations carried out in 1853 and 1854. These phases followed the Baroque remodeling associated with Hieronim Wielopolski and contributed to the layered appearance of the palace.
Ram-Head Sculptures
Three ram-head sculptures were installed above the gate facing the Main Market Square in 1853 and 1854. Franciszek Maria Lanci, a nineteenth-century architect and sculptor of Italian origin, made them. The sculptures give physical form to the long-standing name and emblem associated with the property.
Potocki Renovation
The present volume of the building reflects the Potockis’ major renovation of 1860, when an additional storey was added. The interiors preserve decorative architectural elements from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The residence also contained the Potocki collection of paintings associated with Venetian, Dutch, and German schools, antique furniture, porcelain, and Polish kontusz sashes.
Cellars and Continuing Cultural Spaces
Cellar under the Rams
The medieval cellars include the entrance to the Cellar under the Rams, the cabaret established there in 1956 by Piotr Skrzynecki. This space forms part of the palace’s continuing cultural identity while remaining within its historic cellar complex.
Kino Pod Baranami
The palace also contains the studio cinema Kino Pod Baranami, which has operated there since 1969. Its 2009 distinction from the Europa Cinemas network recognized its program as the best among the network’s member cinemas.
