The Town Museum
The Town Museum
The beginning of this building is associated with urban arrangement changes which took place in the centre of the city at the turn of the 18th and 19th century. The removal of the market square’s old eastern frontage, burned during several fires, along with the removal of the cemetery surrounding the parish church, made way for the new buildings in this part of the Wadowice market square. At the newly established Kościelna Street, the oldest masonry building in the city was built in ca. 1800.
From among other buildings at this street, it is distinguished by its architectural form, because it resembles a manor. It is a building with a centrally located front porch having a balcony with an iron balustrade and Ionic columns which support a triangular tympanum. At the level of the basement, the entire facility was decorated with bossage. Through the axis of the building, a pass-through vestibule leads and like the other rooms it has a sail vault. Between the main entrance from the side of Kościelna Street and the exit to the garden, there is a large difference in levels, as evidenced by the stairs at the rear of the building.
The first owners of this building were the Schwartz family and then it became a property of Maria Gedlowa nee Schwartz. Another owner, since 1919, was Jan Moskała (1868 – 1944) – doctor of medicine and popular physician. In his testament, he bequeathed it to the Jagiellonian University Medical College for scientific and educational activities.
Before the war, on the ground floor there was a dairy managed by Alojzy and Maria Banaś, which was also a seat of the football club “Polonia”. Jan, the son of the owners, went to school together with Karol Wojtyła, Pope John Paul II. It was this dairy where young Karol and his father Karol Sr. used to eat after the death of Emilia Wojtyłowa. Upstairs, there was a flat occupied by a Slovak from Levoča – Alojzy Machej, sergeant of the 12th infantry regiment and a soldier of the Carpathian Rifle Brigade in September 1939. In 1946, on the ground floor the first seat of the business school was located. Since 1968, the building has been owned by the Municipality of Wadowice, which received it from the Jagiellonian University. After major repairs, the building accommodated several cultural institutions.
Noteworthy is the garden adjacent to the building. It is a remnant of a much larger site which belonged to the Gedl family’s estate but over the years lost its area in favour of the emerging urban infrastructure. The remaining part is surrounded by the well-maintained historic city walls built in the 19th century. Today, the garden is a perfect background for theatre performances, concerts, workshops and thematic performances, which are often organised therein.
Currently, the building at 4 Kościelna Street is a seat of the Tourist Information Centre belonging to the network of the Małopolska Tourist Information System (MSIT) and the Town Museum in Wadowice.
Date of introduction: February 22, 2016