Fodor's Expert Review Ulica Floriańska

The beautiful Brama Floriańska (Florian Gate) was built around 1300 and leads through Kraków's old city walls to this street, which was laid out according to the town plan of 1257. The Gothic houses of the 13th-century burghers still remain, although they were rebuilt and given Renaissance or neoclassical facades. The house at No. 24, decorated with an emblem of three bells, was once the workshop of a bell founder. The chains hanging on the walls of the house at No. 17 barred the streets to invaders when the city was under siege. The Dom pod Murzynami (Negroes' House), standing where ulica Floriańska enters the market square, is a 16th-century tenement decorated with two rather fancifully imagined African tribesmen—testimony to the fascination with Africa entertained by Europeans in the Age of Discovery. The house was also once known as Dom pod Etiopy (House under the Ethiopians).