Tourist routes in Gdańsk: Symbols and memorials
The Lady in the Window/www.slupczewski.pl, Michał Słupczewski
The Lady in the Window. For most of us it is the face of Poli Raksy, who starred in the film version of this story, which has been showing on our screens since 1964. The lady's character, created by Jadwiga Łuszczewska (1834-1908), who had the pen name Deotyma, was inspired by a trip along the Vistula from Warsaw to Gdańsk in 1858. The 24-year-old writer was fascinated with Gdańsk and its history, but in effect this adventure waited 35 years. After all, in this 'ancient romance' she aptly described the unusual colour of Gdańsk, and against this background the character Hedwig, a young Gdańsk resident, looking out the window of the magnificent building called the Amber House (Bursztynowy Dom). The novel Panienka ('Miss') appeared in Warsaw in 1893 and had a lot of success, and a second edition appeared five years later, known today under the title of Panienka z okienka ('The Lady at the window'). Theatre became interested in the novel in 1959 and in 1964 the motion picture was commissioned. To commemorate this moving love story a mini-show was created, set in the Nowy Dom Ławy ? a tenement building adjacent to Artus Court. Since 1 June 2001, daily at 13.03 (and in the summer season from 1 June to 15 September also at 15.03 and 17.03),, the figure of a young seventeenth-century Gdańsk lady looks out to passers-by from the highest window, always accompanied by the sound of the il Tedesco Martini Plaisir d'amour melody. The figure of the lady was created by Ewa Topolan, a sculptor at the Gdańsk Academy of Fine Arts, and the mechanism is the work of Tadeusz Nowosielski.