Kanonicza Street

Kanonicza Street is located in Kraków Old Town. It connects Senacka and Podzamcza Streets. It has an irregular arrangement and is tightly built up with tenement houses with preserved decorative portals. A lot of houses come from the Middle Ages or Renaissance. One of the most characteristic buildings here is the 16th-century Bishop Erazm Ciołek Palace. It brings attention with its size and decorated facade. One of the departments of the National Museum is located inside.

Kanonicza Street was part of Okół, the settlement from the times before the foundation of the city, located between Wawel and the main square. In 1401, it was joined to Kraków. It soon became a place where Wawel canons had been settling. They had been getting houses for lifetime use. Many of them rebuilt them according to current trends, making richly decorated residences.

A large part of the local tenement houses come from the Middle Ages, however, their interior design and facades were made into Renaissance and Baroque styles in the next centuries. Almost all houses have decorative, sculpted portals at the entrance, usually with coats of arms of canons who lived here. Facades of few houses are decorated with sgraffito.