Collegium Iuridicum

In the first years of the 15th century two Gothic townhouses were connected into a spacious four-sided building enclosing a quadrangle funded by a foundation set up by King Ladislaus (Władysław) Jagiełło. Since that time, the Collegium Iuridicum has housed lecture halls, an assembly hall, an oratorio, and a library for lawyers, to which the building owes its name, as well as professors’ apartments. There were three doors leading to the Collegium Iuridicum from Kanonicza and Grodzka streets and from the neighbouring St Mary Magdalene Square. The building was repeatedly refurbished during the centuries that followed. The most profound changes followed the fire of the 1630s, when it received a uniform architectural form in the early baroque style. At the time, the stone façade in ul. Grodzka received a rusticated portal with a coat-of-arms of the University: two crossed sceptres on a decorative cartouche. One of Kraków’s most beautiful arcaded galleries was built in the quadrangle. Numerous Gothic and Renaissance remains are preserved in the building including various sections of vaulting, portals, and stone window frames. It is worth giving special attention to the late Gothic panelled crow-stepped gable on the ul. Kanonicza side, one of two such gables found in Kraków’s secular architecture (the other is in Collegium Maius).