Fortune Cellar (Piwnica pod Fortuną) in Lublin

On the vaulted ceiling of a cellar beneath the red house at Rynek 8 in Lublin stands a naked Fortune on a globe, holding a cloth whipped by the wind. Around her play out scenes about marriage, folly and love, copied from a fashionable German emblem book of 1596. The Fortune Cellar (Piwnica pod Fortuną) is a rare example in Poland of secular wall paintings commissioned by townspeople, and today also the setting for a multimedia route through old Lublin.

History of the Lubomelski House

The house is first recorded in 1522. In 1540 Jan Lubomelski had it thoroughly rebuilt, as shown by a stone slab in the gateway bearing his house mark, the date and the inscription "Jan Lubom". After the Lublin fire of 1575 the building was restored and a wine bar was set up in the upper cellar level. The Lubomelski family owned the house until 1661; in 1782 Franciszek Makarowicz remodelled it, giving it much of its present appearance. According to the city, King Stanisław August Poniatowski stayed here, and until 1941 it was the seat of the Lublin rabbinate – from 1904 the house belonged to the Jewish community.

The paintings: an emblem book on the walls

The painted room is 7.10 m long and 2.7 m wide, with a barrel vault 2.45 m high; the paintings cover 60.57 m². The scheme consists of ten fields (nine are still legible), linked by plant tendrils and accompanied by inscriptions in cartouches. Research published in 2018 showed that seven scenes were painted after prints from Emblemata saecularia by the brothers Johann Theodor and Johann Israel de Bry, first published in Frankfurt in 1596, while Fortune and the Cupid-and-Venus roundel follow copper engravings by Heinrich Ulrich of Nuremberg. The date "1679" scratched into a wall shows that people still came down here in the late 17th century.

What to see

• Fortune on the vault – a naked figure standing on a globe set in a shell, which gave the cellar its name.
• Emblem scenes, including "Heraclitus and Democritus", "Blind Marriage", "The Scales of Those About to Marry", "The Ape in a Ruff" and "Love Conquers All".
• A multimedia exhibition in ten themed rooms with a total area of 206 m², such as "Centre and Suburbs", "A Lublin Street", "A Burgher's House of the 16th/17th Century" and "The Underground and Darkness".
• The 1540 slab in the gateway of the house, visible from the Market Square.

Interesting facts

Staff of the "Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre" Centre stress that this is the only known example in Europe of a whole programme from a small book of the album amicorum type – a friendship album in which friends wrote entries – being transferred onto the walls of a room. Later centuries were hard on the paintings: after the window and entrance from the Market Square were bricked up in 1782 the walls became damp, and in the 1930s the cellar was used to store apples. Tactile aids and a film have been prepared for visitors with visual or hearing impairments.

Tripto tip

Until February 2018 the cellars were managed by the Lublin Regional Tourist Organisation; today they are looked after by the Lublin Underground Route of the "Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre" Centre. It is open all year round, every day, and admission is charged – check current hours and prices on the centre's website before you go. Allow about an hour. Before heading underground, take a look at the red façade with its parapet and at the Lubomelski stone slab by the gateway.