Places

Grodzka Street was once the main street of the town. Its name has changed several times. In the 16th century it was called German, later Krakow. The current name comes from the Polish word ‘Gród’ which in English means a castle-town. Once all the townhouses situated at Grodzka Street had arcades, and at least part of them had an attic. Currently, the architecture and the look of the buildings resemble the former glory of this street.

In building no 4 at this street, some of the oldest wall polychrome in Jarosław were discovered. The paintings were discovered in 1991, during the renovation of the store. These are 12th-century oval medallions with four evangelists in a decorative ornament. A cartouche with a white eagle in a crown is on the vault. According to some stories, this building belonged to a writer from Wójtowo, Stanisław Andredes. The room with the polychrome could serve for his law firm. Writer's daughter married a son of Jan Piechnikowicz who could be the author of the polychromy.

At Grodzka under number 7 there is the only one in Poland example of a bourgeois tenement building with a sundial. This is a very rare example of a clock which indicated the time of prayer, times unevenly dividing a day regardless of its duration, into eight or twelve secular hours during the 17th century. Only a segment of the fifth of the wheel with a visible Roman numeral XII and a support for the hand survived.

On the façade of the tenement building no 10 we can see a rare frieze of Renaissance arabesque with rhythmically repeating ornament in the form of pine cones and broken pomegranate. Decoration is made with the sgrafitto technique.

Between the tenement buildings 15 and 17 the narrowest tenement in Jarosław is located. Its width is only about 2.5 m. The ground floor is one room and upstairs there is only one room. Formerly, the entrance to the floor led by already non-existent wooden staircase (from the courtyard). Now, you enter there from the building no 17.

Interestingly, there were workshops at Grodzka Street in the 16th and 17th setting the tone of the intellectual life of the town and evidencing its material wealth. It was there where the printing house of Jan Szeliga and the bookstore of Andrzej Cichończyk were located, also there was the bookbinding shop of Maciej Szymańczyk. The first Jewish printing house and bookstore, owned by Solomon Baumgarten, was located at Grodzka Street.