Pomorska Street

You enter the building through its interior courtyard, and the part of Kraków’s wartime story that survives is concentrated below street level. Today, the basement is the memorial museum “Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Krakowa – Ulica Pomorska”, a branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków. Two exhibition sections shape your route: “occupied Kraków (Kraków w latach 1939–1956)” and the “gestapo cells”—kept in their former shape, because even after decades, the rooms still function as evidence.

One detail turns the execution cell from history into a direct statement: on its wall is the Latin inscription “Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patri mori!”. The museum also holds a tighter, named thread within the larger tragedy: Polish General Stanislaw Rostworowski was killed in this building on 11 August 1944. And at least one of the 108 Martyrs of World War Two is known to have been interrogated here, linking the basement not only to a system of terror but to identifiable lives.

If the underground museum is what you see now, the building’s later uses explain why you have to seek it out. The upper floors have functioned as hostels, while tourist information has sometimes called the structure “Silesian House” (Dom Śląski) or used the local shorthand Pomorsk.