Let's get to know the successive owners of the Royal Tenement House in Lviv. The former merchant and then noble house is now home to one of Lviv's most important museums.

The Poniński family and changes in the Royal Tenement House
Shortly after the death of Józef Rzewuski in 1816 in Lviv, the movables were transported to Warsaw, and Count Aleksander Franciszek Chodkiewicz (1776-1836) sold the tenement to Princess Helena Ponińska (1791-1853), wife of Karol Henryk (1789-1830), née Górska. Ponińska, a literary and social activist, stayed in her Lviv home occasionally and used the residence primarily for representation and social purposes. Traditionally, shops and merchants' storerooms functioned on the ground floor of the tenement throughout the 19th century, and she also rented rooms to tenants.

Shortly after Poninska bought the house, in 1820 the magistrate of Lviv ordered the removal of the stone galleries in the courtyard, which were threatening to collapse, and at the same time agreed to build an annexe in this place. A stable and coach house were built on the other side of the courtyard.

From the mid-1920s onwards. The Poninskis regularly carried out repairs and renovations to the property. From 1826, Antoni Bauman (1809-about 1895), son of the architect and stucco maker Fryderyk, made stucco decorations on the cookers in the representative rooms of the first floor. The Duchess Ponińska, who paid particular attention to the preservation of the stucco work in the piano nobile rooms, often gave precise instructions regarding the material or colouring of the interiors. In 1831, on her recommendation, the mosaicist Jan Ziolkowski installed stucco on the walls of the mosaic salon. Between 1832 and 1834, the attic wall on the façade was repaired, the roofs were rebuilt and covered with shingles. In 1836 a completely new roof was made over the front building according to a design sent from Vienna. The two hallways and the courtyard were then paved anew. Another renovation of the house took place in 1850, prepared by Joseph Engel (1819-1888), architect and town builder. The work included the restoration of the hallway, staircase, representative and residential interiors. The glazed gallery on the first floor facing the courtyard was probably built in 1851.

The Duchess, who died in Lviv in 1853, bequeathed the Lviv townhouse and its furnishings to her son Kalikst (1824-1902). In the summer of 1864 the owner of the building carried out an unauthorised restoration of the façade, during which the rustication was cut away and part of the façade was painted black. It was not until 1874 that an order was made to cover the roofs with fireproof zinc sheeting. On the occasion of the bicentenary celebrations of the relief of Vienna, in September 1883, a plaque was unveiled on the façade of the building with the inscription "King Jan III Sobieski lived here", and the Duke opened the representative interiors to the public.

Establishment of the King John III National Museum in Lviv
Kalikst Poniński died childless in 1902, and his estate passed to the Lubomirski family as his closest relatives. In 1908 the Municipality of Lviv purchased the building without its furnishings from his heirs and took it over for administration. By a resolution of August 1908, the City Council allocated the house for the purposes of the King Jan III National Museum.

The purchased tenement house was neglected and not renovated for a long time. By the time the museum opened on 12 September 1908, only cleaning work and minor repairs had been carried out. The collections gathered until then were placed in the rooms of the first and second floors of the front building. The middle room of the first floor, called the Throne Room, was dedicated exclusively to the memory of King John III.

Conservation work on the former Royal Tenement House
The restoration work on the building was spread out over time and financed by the city's resources and a subsidy from the Galician Land Sejm. The restoration began with the ground floor rooms, where Gothic and Renaissance vaults were exposed. Between 1911 and 1912, work continued on the front façade, at which time the portal of the entrance gate was renovated and the plinth restored. The entrances to the shops were replaced with glazed window openings and the rustication on the entire façade was evened out. The masonry of the attic was repaired, while the sculptures were cleaned and missing attributes were added. The vestibule, roof and cellars were further repaired. By the end of 1913, in the rear house on the first floor, the original shape of the chamber with the Renaissance ceiling was restored and the painted frieze was reconstructed, the staircase was renovated and the bricked-up staircase leading to the second floor was uncovered. In 1917, the first phase of restoration work on the building was completed.

The Royal Tenement House and the Two Lviv Museums
In 1912, the museum exhibition was expanded with the addition of more rooms, including those located in the southern annexe. In 1920, in view of the Bolshevik invasion threatening the city, part of the collection was evacuated to Kraków. After the return of the museum collections to Lviv in July 1921, the exhibition was reopened in September of that year on the occasion of the First Eastern Trade Fair. The building then housed two institutions: The John III National Museum and the Historical Museum of the City of Lviv.

Work on the reconstruction of the arcaded cloisters in the courtyard was carried out in 1926-1931. In 1927 the restoration of the cloisters from Blacharska Street (now Fedorovycha Street) was completed. Three years later, the Conservation Office gave permission for the demolition of the 19th-century southern outbuilding and the reconstruction of the cloisters previously standing in its place. The work, under the direction of the well-known Lviv architect, Vyacheslav Daychak (1882-1968), consisted of a new construction of reinforced concrete vaults supported by stone columns. Local materials were used to create arcades, cornices, floors and balustrades. The next stage of the work was the tidying up of the courtyard, where architectural elements from demolished Lviv townhouses and antique cannons were placed in the reconstructed galleries. The last repairs to the building before the outbreak of the Second World War took place in 1937 in connection with a national convention of museologists held at the time.

Summary
Thanks to the initiative of the historian and archivist Aleksander Czołowski (1865-1944) and the commitment of the vice-president of Lviv Tadeusz Rutowski (1852-1919), the former merchant, and later nobleman's house was adapted at the beginning of the 20th century to house one of Lviv's most important museums, and still serves this function today. Today, the interiors of the Royal Tenement House largely reflect the appearance of a 19th-century house, and the building's architecture also retains stylistic elements of earlier eras.