Copernicus House
house in Toruń, Poland
The Copernicus House is a historic, Gothic tenement house in Toruń, Poland, which belonged to the Copernicus family in the second half of the 15th century. It is considered by many historians to be the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus, and it houses a museum dedicated to the astronomer.
Location
The tenement house is located in the southern part of the Old Town, at 15/17 Kopernika Street.
History
The tenement house dates back to 1370 and is what was called a granary house, which in the Middle Ages performed both residential and storage functions.
At the end of the 14th century, the cloth merchant Herbord Platte became the owner of the house. In 1459, Lucas I Watzenrode, Nicolaus Copernicus' grandfather, took over the house from his nephew, Szymon Falbrecht, and soon gave it to his daughter Barbara Watzenrode and her spouse, Nicolaus Copernicus senior. Many historians point to this building as the place where Nicolaus Copernicus was born in 1473. In 1480 the Copernicus family sold the building to Georg Polnische.
In the nineteenth century, the building was adapted for rental apartments. At that time, its interiors were rebuilt and the facade was plastered.
The public source identifies “Copernicus House” as house in Toruń, Poland. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Copernicus, House and house.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4165354. VIAF identifies the subject as 153327909. Authority coordinates are 53.009, 18.604. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1370, 1459, 1473 and 1480.
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This entry incorporates text from “Copernicus House” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.