Text: Jaromír Andrýsek
We recently printed the title Queen Viola. I picked up the book, examined it with the eyes of the bookbinder and then read the short text on the cover. Immediately I thought it was her: the beautiful Princess Viola Elizabeth of Těšín, wife of the Czech King Wenceslas III. One of the personalities associated with our town, whose life was not at all easy. A year after her marriage, she was widowed and the Prague court made it known that she was from the periphery.
After work in the evening, I got the urge to go into town to see another princess. I crossed the bridge into Cieszyn and walked along the Głęboka to the Rynek. At the fountain, I stopped for a moment and looked at the listed house No. 18 with the Café Herbowa sign. I had already looked at the house more than once up close. It was the home of the last princess of Těšín, also Elizabeth, but Lucretia (1599-1653), a woman severely tested by time.
She married against her will, only to end up living in formal separation. After the death of her brother, the last Piast, she had disputes with the emperor over the rule of Teschen. Meanwhile, the Thirty Years’ War raged in Europe and Těšín was destroyed by foreign armies until the country’s economic decline.
The famous castle of Těšín remained a ruin, uninhabitable. So, Princess Lucretia and her court literally moved to the Rynek. It was built only a hundred years earlier at the end of the 15th century. Another prince of Těšín, Casimir II, gave the town two houses to establish a town hall (1496). A site was marked out and the houses that still form the atmosphere of the town today were built. All craft, commercial and social life was concentrated here.
Between 1640 and 1641, Princess Lucretia bought three houses on and near the Market Square from the townspeople. After the last siege of the castle in 1648, she moved into the houses she had bought and lived there until 1653, when she died.
In 1648, her new residence in today’s house No. 18 was decorated with floor tiles with the Piast eagle and the letters EL HZT “Elisabeth Lukretia Herzogin zu Teschen”. She had a personal chapel built behind the house, which was later extended into the present-day Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross. After the Duchess’s death, the houses became the property of the Kaiser, who donated them to the Jesuits. A convent and a gymnasium were established here, and in 1802 the Šeršník Museum with a library. From the street that bears the name of the museum’s founder, the Greek inscription “Psyches iatreion” (Healing of the soul) can be read on the house.
But let’s leave the history and look at the Herbowo café. Passing through the garden, you enter under an archway with several cosy tables. There, among other things, is the entrance to the Euroregional Centre and the Secretariat of the Euroregion of Teschen Silesia.
From the arcade you enter the café itself with its historicizing-stained glass windows. The arch above the bar is decorated with a wood carving of the Těšín skyline from 1580, the time of its economic prosperity and tolerance of ideas.
The tables are decorated with candlesticks, porcelain teapots and statuettes. The fireplace with a stove and a mannequin in Těšín costume are also stylish. If you walk through the café into the corridor and up the stairs to the first floor, you will see an exhibition of photographs documenting selected buildings of French Classicism and its later variations in the architecture of Těšín Silesia.
However, what creates the atmosphere of any place is the people. Students and pensioners come here and they all talk to the café owner as if they have known each other for years. Even with me, she was outgoing and gave me a lot of information about the house and the Princess. It was a nice meeting, although not with coffee, but with beer, which bears the name of Prince Přemyslav I. Nošák. I think that Princess Lucretia’s house is worth a visit and Café Herbowa with its friendly service is worth your visit too.
