Rynek 8

In the 17th century, townhouse No. 8 on Wrocław’s market square briefly served as a temporary royal residence, its facade adorned with elaborate frescoes depicting Emperor Leopold I and the Seven Electors of the Holy Roman Empire. The building stands among 60 historic townhouses that were meticulously rebuilt from ruins after the 1945 siege, a reconstruction so faithful that today’s visitors admire what is essentially a replica of a replica, as many buildings had already been restored multiple times over centuries of wars and floods.

The square’s newest residents arrived by a different route entirely. In 2001, a bronze figure in a top hat appeared on a nearby street, commemorating the Orange Alternative, an anti-communist movement that had spent the 1980s mocking the regime with absurdist street theater instead of slogans. The gnome caught on. There are now more than a thousand of them scattered across Wrocław, tucked into doorways and window ledges, doing ordinary jobs at ankle height. A city that rebuilt its emperors and electors stone by stone from memory also found room, eventually, for an army of tiny bronze men who answer to gnome one. Er, sorry: no one.