Jama Michalika

The story

Jan Michalik opened his confectionery here in 1895. It became the home of Kraków’s Young Poland artists and the Zielony Balonik cabaret, whose paintings, caricatures, puppets, dark carved furniture and stained glass still fill the restaurant rooms. Today it serves Polish meals as well as coffee and cakes.

Why Jama Michalika is iconic

One of Poland’s richest surviving artistic restaurant interiors: intimate, eccentric and dense with the work and stories of the movement that made it famous.

Selected by Ernst Aben · Information reviewed July 2026