Długosz House

The house at No. 25, closes the western side of ul. Kanonicza. Like most of the other houses in the street, it dates back to the 14th century. It replaced two mediaeval structures that stood over an artificial arm of the Rudawa river, which at that time flowed along today’s ul. Podzamcze. It used to house the baths fed with water from the nearby Rudawa. As these were the royal baths, they are not to be associated with numerous mediaeval “facilities” of the sort that were generally and often wrongly considered the “hotbed of all evil”.

In 1450, the chapter designed the house as the residence of Canon Jan Długosz (Johannes Longinus), the most eminent historian and chronicler of the Polish Middle Ages. It is here that he wrote his numerous works including the most famous Annales seu cronici incliti regni Poloniae (known in English as The Annals of Jan Długosz), also here he most probably taught the sons of the King Casimir the Jagiellonian (Kazimierz Jagiellończyk). It is worth emphasising the fact that his chronicle was the first work based on a thorough examination of sources and a simultaneous rejection of all the “fairytale and legendary” accretions. In 1454, Długosz together with his younger brother, also called Jan, added two new wings to the south and west of the house with windows overlooking Wawel and the Vistula.

In the 16th century, the house was refurbished in Renaissance style. The portal and the stone cornice with the Latin inscription which still rings true today, Nil est in homine bona mente melius (There is nothing better in man than a just mind), date back to that time.

In the latter half of the 19th century, the ground-floor corner room of the house was the home and workshop of the sculptor Franciszek Wyspiański. His son Stanisław, a great poet, playwright, and painter spent his childhood and school years here. Later, in one of his most beautiful poems, Stanisław wrote:

At the foot of Wawel, did father have his workshop:
The huge white room, with high ceiling,
Alive with great throngs of dead figures.
That I used to visit as a young boy – and what I felt,
I trimmed into the shapes of my art.

The first few lines of this poem can be read today on the bronze plaque by Bronisław Chromy placed on the façade of the house in ul. Podzamcze. Next to it there is a richly sculpted stone foundation plaque dating from the 15th century. This was transferred here from the demolished Psalterists’ House on Wawel, which Długosz had founded. Yet what attracts special attention is the 17th-century image of Our Lady, marked with 16 bullet holes from the days of the Confederation of Bar (1768-1772). Today, Długosz House is the headquarters of the Pontifical Academy of Theology.