The name comes from the Morsztyn family, the 15th-century house owners.

History

A first stone house was built here in the mid-15th century. In the 15th and 16th centuries, it was owned by the Morenstein (Morsztyn) merchant family. It was a very modern building. In 1488 the councillors allowed Jerzy Morenstein to connect the house to the city’s water pumping system. In 1510 the house was purchased by the Frizer family, silk merchants from Silesia. The building was upgraded in the 16th and in the first half of the 17th century. Later, it changed hands frequently, and in the 1730s it became the property of Jan Tomasz Morsztyn, the starost of Sieradz. The rear and side annexes were built in the first half of the 16th century. They were remodelled in the 17th century, and the extra floor was added before 1780. Another vertical extension (in the front building and the annexe) and the new façade date back to the beginning of the 18th century. In the second half of the 18th century, the house belonged to the Kosiński family (also known by another name of Puget) (1768), and the ground floor was occupied by Piotr Minola’s cloth store (later Józef Kubecki’s). Another renovation followed around 1780, and a thorough reconstruction at the beginning of the 19th century. In the first half of the 19th century, the house belonged to the merchant Antoni Morbitzer, Kubecki’s son-in-law, whose money he used to buy the house. Morbitzer commissioned alteration of the building. After 1846, the cloth trade was no longer profitable (as a result of the so-called customs crisis), and the owner changed for another business. In 1880 the house was a literary and artistic casino and a meeting spot for the local elite. In 1947 Kazimierz Książek opened the Under the Wierzynek restaurant in the house; although the establishment was nationalised in 1951, the name Wierzynek and the type of provided services have survived.

Description

A three-storey, four-axis house with a habitable loft hidden behind an attic wall. The house owes its present-day appearance mainly to Antoni Morbitzer’s alteration project from the early 19th century. At that time, his monogram (AM) was placed at the top of the elegant, classicist façade, flanked by Poseidon and Amphitrine: the allegories of trade and sea navigation. The building was renovated after a fire in 1850. The 16-century ceilings have survived on the first floor, and the so-called Pompeian Room features wall paintings from the late 18th century. The building (together with the annexes) underwent a major renovation between 1971 and 1982. Between 1975 and 1979, the house was connected with the neighbouring buildings nos 15 and 17. Currently, it is part of the Wierzynek restaurant complex (guests can dine in one of the six rooms: Wierzynkowska, Kolumnowa, Tatrzańska, Zegowa, Portretowa, Rycerska).

The site is partly available: freely from the outside but inside only during the working hours of the stores and institutions.

Roman Marcinek, Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Kraków 20/04/2016

Bibliography

• Dyba O., Kraków. Zabytki architektury i budownictwa, Warszawa 2007
• Encyklopedia Krakowa, Warszawa – Kraków 2000.
• Fabiański M., Purchla J., Historia architektury Krakowa w zarysie, Kraków 2001
• Komorowski W., Sudacka A., Rynek Główny w Krakowie, Ossolineum 2008
• Rożek M., Przewodnik po zabytkach i kulturze Krakowa, Kraków 1993
• Marcinek R., Kraków, Kraków 2001