Szlaki województw śląskiego i opolskiego

The Opole Market Square, surrounded by stylish, renovated tenement houses, is one of the most representative parts of Opole. Its central element is the town hall building modeled on the Florentine Palazzo Vecchio with a 65-meter tower. In 1945, with the entry of the Red Army into the city, most of the historic tenement houses on the western and eastern frontages were destroyed. The remaining ones were rebuilt after World War II, but only some of them refer in shape to pre-war architecture. On the northern frontage, it is worth paying attention to tenement house No. 11, which was reconstructed after the war in the neoclassical style that had characterized it until the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when the first Opole postal inn had its seat there. Tenement house No. 13 housed an inn, tobacco and stationery shops, and on the first floor – a watchmaker. House No. 14 housed a popular Italian ice cream parlor, and the last house in the frontage – a book rental and a clothing store. On the eastern frontage, the corner tenement house housing a bookstore deserves attention, which in the 18th century was the seat of the National Government, and then the Institute of Obstetrics. In the 19th century, it was bought by Erdmann Raabe, the owner of a publishing company well known in Europe, to be used as a printing house. At the end of the 19th century, it was replaced by a stationery store. The building, which currently houses a bank, was the "Ehape" department store before World War II. Three tenement houses on the southern frontage (from the side of the Franciscan church) were rebuilt in the pre-war style. At the beginning of the 20th century, they housed shops, a wine wholesale and a liqueur factory (No. 30), and a women's fashion house (No. 31). On the western frontage at number 1 stands a medieval tenement house, called "Ducal" ("Książęca") or "Under the Lion" ("Pod Lwem"), which until 1532 belonged to the Opole Piasts. The two tenement houses adjacent to it were rebuilt in the image of the pre-war ones, while numbers 4 and 5 have a completely different shape. Under numbers 5, 6, and 7 there were, among others, inns and restaurants, while the last tenement houses on this frontage housed shops, a saddler's, and a shoemaker's shop. Practical information: The monument is generally accessible from the outside. Free access. Free parking spaces on Szpitalna Street.