Rydlówka
Kraków Artists: Writers and Poets
A historic manor house at Tetmajera Street 28 in Bronowice Małe, where on 20 November 1900 the wedding of the poet Lucjan Rydel and the peasant girl Jadwiga Mikołajczykówna took place; the event was immortalised by Stanisław Wyspiański in his play "The Wedding". The manor was built in 1894 by the painter Włodzimierz Tetmajer, who had settled in Bronowice four years earlier, and his wife was Anna Mikołajczykówna, the bride's sister. A museum has been housed here since 1969, and since 20 November 2018 Rydlówka has been a branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków.
History
Rydlówka is a former wooden manor house in Bronowice Małe where the wedding described by Stanisław Wyspiański in his play "Wesele" (The Wedding) took place. It was built in 1894 by the painter Włodzimierz Tetmajer, who had settled in this village outside Kraków four years earlier. His wife Anna came from a Bronowice peasant family, and the house stood on land belonging to her father, Jacek Mikołajczyk. Originally it was a single-storey wooden house with a thatched roof.
In the summer of 1900 the poet Lucjan Rydel was a frequent visitor to the Tetmajers, smitten with seventeen-year-old Jadwiga, the youngest sister of the lady of the house. They married on 20 November 1900 in St Mary's Basilica; among the witnesses was Wyspiański, a friend of the groom and of the whole Rydel family. The wedding reception was held in the Tetmajers' house. During the celebrations that followed, Wyspiański did not dance - he stood leaning against the door frame watching the couples, while in the host's room the older guests talked politics. From these observations came the idea for the play, which the poet set in Tetmajer's very room.
The Tetmajers later moved to a nearby house, and in 1908 they sold the manor to Rydel. In 1912 the new owner had it rebuilt to a design by Józef Pokutyński: a common room was added on one side, and the thatch was replaced with roof tiles. After a fire in December 1968 the house was restored for the hundredth anniversary of Wyspiański's birth, and in 1969 it opened as a museum, at first run by the Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Society (PTTK). Since 2016 it has been looked after by the Museum of Kraków, and Rydlówka reopened as its branch on 20 November 2018.
The exhibition fills five rooms on the ground floor. The wedding room has been recreated from the description in the play, and visitors can stand exactly where Wyspiański stood that night.
Did you know?
Every year on 20 November, the anniversary of the wedding and of the museum's opening, the "Planting of the Straw Man" (Osadzenie chochoła) takes place on the flower bed opposite the window of Tetmajer's former room.