The Market Square
From Plac Dominikański (Dominican Square) we go under the arcade of Ratuszowa street in order to get to the Rynek (The Market Square). The main building there is Ratusz – Town Hall Rynek 1 1 Market Square
The building of the Cieszyn Town Hall was erected in 1496 when Cieszyn Prince Kazimierz II sold two houses to the town which were later destroyed. The first renaissance Town Hall, erected in that place, surrendered to partial or total destruction during the town fires in 1552, 1720 and 1789. Rev. Leopold Jan Szersznik employed himself in the process of rebuilding the seat of the town authorities by directing the work of raising the town from ruins. A talented Cieszyn architect, Ignacy Chambrez de Ryvos, made the plans for a new Town Hall. This way a classicistic building of refined elegance came into being, with a clock tower, rising above the establishment, topped with a helmet in the shape of an architectonic lantern. Between the windows of the first and second floors of the projection a plaque was placed with the date 1789 and an inscription about the fire, in Latin: ‘Exortus ignis sexta maii in superioris suburbii hospitio cunctas aedes urbis huius exussit’ (‘Started on the 6th of May in an inn at Górne Przedmieście, the fire destroyed all the buildings of this town’). Also a marble plaque was built in there, dedicated to Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen and his wife, Marie Christine, who donated a substantial sum for the completion of the Town Hall and other buildings in the town: ‘Christinae et Alberto Ducibus Tescinensibus, ob civitatem suppeditatis sumptibus suscitatam e cineribus, in quos incendio miserando anno 1789, pridie nona maji redactas fuerat, aeternae memoriae causa cives teschinenses posuere’ (‘To Christine and Albert, the Cieszyn Duke and Duchess, for helping the town to rise from ashes after the fire in the wretched year of 1789, on the eve of the seventh day of May, to eternal remembrance, from the residents of Cieszyn’).
The rebuilding of the Town Hall was finished on the first of September, 1800 with the formal placing, on the tower, of a crown and a so-called cupola that contained circumstantial documents. In a literary work written in Latin, rev. Szersznik described the course of the whole ceremony: ‘...the Market Square, filled with the company of 100 soldiers and a crowd waited for the arrival of Duke Albert. But here the ceremony begins. The drums play, mortars shoot, music plays, six old men carry the tower crown, twelve girls, dressed in white, assist them. The order is maintained by a rifle club – Duke Albert’s lifeguards. The Town Senate march, the crowd behind them. The speech was made by Piotr Sporschil, Cieszyn town clerk. The crown was hauled up by Jan Kucharz, a carpenter; and there he drank the health of the Emperor’s family and all the clerks and workers who took part in the building…’ Till today only the tower remains. The late classicistic façade, with Tuscan colonnade and a triangular fronton with the arms of the town was erected in 1846 after another fire.
n Hall of the Town Council
m the very beginning of its existence, Ratusz (The Town Hall) was linked, on its right side, with town butchers’ stalls. At the end of the 18th century they were remodeled into the national starosta flat and the police guardhouse. A two-storey, late Baroque building was erected, covered with a mansard roof and joined to the main body of the Town Hall by means of an arcade over Rzeźnicza street (today’s Ratuszowa). In 1869 another floor, the second floor, was added, thus gaining additional rooms for the Cieszyn District Court. The external elevation of that structure got a neorenaissance decoration, with a wide projection in the middle enhanced with tall Venetian windows on the second floor and a rich crowning mould. A Cieszyn builder, Gotfryd Dittrich, was the author of the rebuilding. When, in 1906, the District Court was transferred to a building in Garncarska street it was decided that in the rooms emptied in that way the offices of the Municipal Government and Session Rooms (a smaller one for committee debates and a bigger one for the sessions of the Municipal Council, i.e. the Civil Parish Department) would be located. It was then, too, that a neobaroque oval-shaped fronton, with a cartouche inside, in low relief, with the arms of Cieszyn, was placed above the crowning mould. This emphasized the appropriation of the old guardhouse. It was decided that the new session room of the Town Council would get the artistic decoration appropriate to the standing resulting from the function it played. Thus it was furnished with richly embellished oak panelling and doorframes which were made by the carpenter Maksymilian Schubert. In two corners of the room Art Nouveau stoves with the arms of Cieszyn were placed.
the third corner a stately case-clock from the workshop of the Cieszyn watch-maker, Franciszek Dibon, appeared. However, it was the crest framing, placed under the partly gilded stucco ceiling that was the real adornment of the room. It was made up of emblems, in low relief, of 24 Cieszyn crafsman guilds carved by the sculptor Franciszek Karger, according to designs by Jerzy Frisch and Leonard Hulka. The second part of the framing consists of 39 coats of arms of the representatives of Cieszyn nobility and also those of Cieszyn Dukes, the arms of Silesia and the arms of Cieszyn. They were painted by Maksymilian Salomon. The session room was furnished with a set of furniture, namely: armchairs, benches and tables, that matched the interior. On the front wall, an oil portrait of the Emperor Franz Joseph, wearing the costume of The Order of the Golden Fleece was inserted in the sequence of panelling. Between the windows 7 oil portraits of the Envoys who signed the Cieszyn Peace Treaty in 1779 were hung. On the opposite side also seven portraits found their place, i.e. oil portraits of the Habsburgs, who were, at the same time, Cieszyn Dukes. The rear wall was embellished with the portraits of the founders of the three town foundations: Count Adam Wacław Paczyński from Tęczyn and two barons – Karol Cselesta and Adam Borek from Rostropice (at present the portraits are in the Museum of Cieszyn Silesia). Albin Teodor Prokop, a building adviser for Komora Cieszyńska was the author of the ideological general outline for the session room and its crest framing. The Session Room of the Town Council was officially opened on September 2nd 1906, when the Emperor Franz Joseph I was entertained in the Town Hall, with due ceremony, during his visit to Cieszyn. Actually it was not the Emperor’s first visit to the Cieszyn Town Hall, for he had visited it in 1880, of which a black marble plaque, placed on the wall above the staircase, reminds us, with the following inscription: ‘Am 18. Oktober 1880 Vormittags 10 Uhr geruhten Sr. Majestät Kaiser Franz Josef der Erste die Stadtgemeinde Teschen in diesem Amtslokale des Gemeindevorstandes mit Ihrem Allerhöhst gnädigen Besuche auszuzeichnen.’ (‘On the 18th of October 1880, at 10 a.m. His Majesty Emperor Franz Joseph I deigned to favour the Town Parish of Cieszyn, with His most gracious visit to these premises of the Parish Government.’
Photographs: Dominik Dubiel, Paweł Halama, Daniel Hryciuk, Magdalena Jańczuk, Renata Karpińska, Mariusz Makowski, Joanna Rzepka-Dziedzic, Anna Szostok-Fedrizzi, Henryk Tesarczyk
Translation from Polish: Lucyna Krzanowska and John Whitewood
Reproductions of exhibits, documents and photographs from the collections of:
- Museum of Cieszyn Silesia in Cieszyn,
- Cieszyn Historical Library,
- Cieszyn Branch of the State Archive in Katowice,
- Cieszyn Town Council,
- Museum of Beskidy in Frýdek-Mistek,
- private collection of Mariusz Makowski
- H. Wawreczka, J. Spyra, M. Makowski, ‘Cieszyn i Czeski Cieszyn na starych widokówkach i fotografiach’, WART, Nebory 1999