Pałac Pod Krzysztofory – wokół kultu św. Krzysztofa w Krakowie

KRZYSZTOFORY PALACE – NOTES ON THE VENERATION OF ST CHRISTOPHER IN KRAKÓW The paper is basically an art historian’s commentary on the architectural research conducted on the facade of the palace in the period 2009–2011. The aim of the research was to discover the historical transformations of the building and to clarify the issue of its emblem - the statue of St Christopher which was removed from the facade in 1791. It is to the patronage of St Christopher (Krzysztof ) that the building owes its name - Krzysztofory Palace (Pałac pod Krzysztofory, or simply Krzysztofory) – which is still in use, even today. The monumental city mansion, proudly standing on the corner of the Main Market Square and Szczepańska Street, contains layers of historical material that reach back to the times of the establishment of Kraków under Magdeburg Law in 1257. After 1644 the new owner of the property Adam Kazanowski (ca. 1599–1649), royal major-domo and leaseholder of the royal salt mines in Wieliczka, used the house’s mediaeval Gothic basements - remnants of an earlier (1423–1557) residence that belonged to the patrician Morstin family - as foundations when he initiated the transformation of the mediaeval burgher house (kamienica) into a stately city mansion of an aristocratic family. The palace was given its final, baroque architectural form by its next owner, Jan Wawrzyniec Wodzicki (d. 1697) who commissioned the design to an Italian architect and constructor Giacomo Solari (the redevelopment took place over the years 1682–1684). The palace interiors boasted an extraordinarily lavish decor and furnishings, fit to host royalty who were frequent guests in the house. The building lost its stately character of a magnate’s residence after 1790, i.e. after it had been purchased by Jacek Kluszewski, the Starosta of Brzeg, who commenced its modernization and transformation into a tenement house by removing the larger-than-life plaster statue of the building’s patron Saint Christopher carrying the Baby Jesus on his shoulders from the facade, which stirred public outrage among Kraków’s residents. The removal of the figure was at the same time a symbolic act that ended the age of splendour and glory in the history of this residence. However, the traditional name of the house remained, and the recent re-exploration of the subject undertaken to determine the genesis and the circumstances that influenced the creation of the name have yielded new scholarly findings that call for a revision of the current state of research.