Piwnica Pod Baranami cabaret
Kraków Artists: Music
A literary cabaret founded in 1956 in the cellars of the "Pod Baranami" palace on the Main Market Square by Piotr Skrzynecki and a group of students from Kraków universities; among its founders were Bronisław Chromy and Krzysztof Penderecki. It was officially opened on 26 May 1956, originally as a meeting place for Kraków students, and the gatherings were held by candlelight. Songs, short stage pieces and open-air shows were created at Piwnica. In the 1960s Ewa Demarczyk appeared here, who together with the cabaret's composer Zygmunt Konieczny made the cabaret famous across Poland, as did the singing poet Leszek Długosz; jazz bands led by Krzysztof Komeda and Andrzej Kurylewicz also played here.
History
The Pod Baranami Palace ("Under the Rams"), in whose cellars the cabaret was born, stands at Main Market Square 27, with its corner on St Anne's Street. According to tradition there used to be an inn here, where rams were kept for sale, hence the name and the emblem. The three rams' heads above the gateway on the Market Square side, by Franciszek Maria Lanci, appeared in 1853-1854. From 1822 the palace belonged to the Potocki family, and in 1947 it was taken over by the Kraków House of Culture.
In 1956 Piotr Skrzynecki and his friends set up a club here for students of Kraków's universities. It was officially opened on 26 May 1956, and the meetings were at first held by candlelight. The founders included the sculptor Bronisław Chromy and the composer Krzysztof Penderecki, and the literary side was run by Janina Garycka. The club grew into a literary cabaret: songs, short stage pieces and open-air shows were created here.
At the end of the 1950s Piwnica became the centre of jazz in Poland - Krzysztof Komeda and Andrzej Kurylewicz, among others, played here. In the 1960s they were joined by Ewa Demarczyk, who together with the composer Zygmunt Konieczny made the cabaret famous throughout the country, and by Leszek Długosz. Later Marek Grechuta and Grzegorz Turnau also performed here, and Andrzej Wajda, Czesław Miłosz and Sławomir Mrożek belonged to the Piwnica circle too. After Skrzynecki's death in 1997 the artists declared that the cabaret goes on, and they carried on performing.
Did you know?
The founder of Piwnica was famous for holding his own birthday and name-day parties at night, each time in a different place: on a boat on the Vistula, under the Dębnicki Bridge, among the stalls of Nowy Kleparz market and even at the Main Railway Station.