Tournament hall

Playing Hall is located in a building of the Crown Tribunal in the centre of the Old Town Market Square.

HISTORY OF CROWN TRIBUNAL

Once this place was the town hall. The first building stood here as early as the fourteenth century. In the beginning it was wooden, replaced with a Gothic brick with the copula in 1389. Following the great fire of Lublin in 1575, the town hall was rebuilt in a Renaissance style and since that time it held the office of the Crown Tribunal, an institution created by King Stephen Bathory - the highest appeal court in the Crown of the Polish Kingdom.

When Lublin became the seat of the Tribunal the town's significance especially economic has greatly increased. Many representatives of gentry and nobility came to the Lublin court, which stimulated the growth of trade and handicraft.
In the 1680's, the Crown Tribunal was rebuilt in a Baroque style. The building was extended with a second floor

The final reconstruction works of the Crown Tribunal building were conducted at the end of XVIII century by Dominik Merlini, an architect in ordinary of King Stanisław II August Poniatowski. The building has then become a Classicist structure. Following the extension of the whole building, the second floor was finished. The original total area of the Crown Tribunal was doubled.

             foto: The Crown Tribunal

Today, the Tribunal houses the Wedding Palace and its cellars were transformed into Historical Museum of the Old Town Hall and the Crown Tribunal. One can see here the copies of documents and fragments of iconography. The exposition presents the history of the seat of the city authorities and the highest appeal court for the nobility of Little Poland, which held sessions in the Lublin Town Hall since 1578.

                                                                                                 foto: The Crown Tribunal - inside

It is connected to a "devil's court" legend about a devil who gave a fairer verdict to a poor widow than the corrupt judges.