Dom Burmistrza w Olsztynie, Gothic townhouse on the Old Town Market Square in Olsztyn, Poland
The Mayor's House is the oldest brick residential building in Olsztyn, standing at Rynek Starego Miasta 11, opposite the Old Town Hall. It is the only townhouse on the Old Town with pointed Gothic arcades, while the others are Baroque or later. The partly reconstructed arcades remain unplastered, showing original Gothic walls with roll mouldings, and stone reliefs by Ryszard Wachowski fill the spaces between the windows.
The first record of a "stone house at the market" dates from 1507, when most houses on the square were still timber. Art historian Andrzej Rzempołuch links its construction to Olsztyn's self-government of 1500, when the town council bought the hereditary office of village mayor and first elected a mayor on 22 February 1500. In 1624 burgrave Eustachy Bronisz, later mayor, disputed the town's extension of the town hall next to his house on the eastern side, possibly the origin of the name.
The building is known as the Mayor's House, or colloquially burmistrzówka, and traditionally regarded as the residence of Olsztyn's mayors. A plaque in the arcades, placed in 1986, recalls that the Polish-language Gazeta Olsztyńska had its first office here from 1886 to 1893. A 2003 plaque honours Jan z Łajs, the town's founder and first sołtys, though it wrongly calls him the city's founder instead of the Warmian chapter.
The building sits in the center of Olsztyn's market square and is easily accessible on foot from surrounding areas. The location makes it simple to view the architecture from the street while exploring the historic heart of the city.
In 1943, earthworks on the property uncovered a medieval helmet, dated at the time to the 14th century. The find came three years after the house had been almost entirely dismantled for a planned reconstruction that the war interrupted.
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