Headsman´s House (Katov dom)

The building of a Renaissance bourgeois house (probably existed as a stone house already in 1607) is the only preserved building of this kind in Trenčín. It is a typical bourgeois house with a circular courtyard gallery in which there were living-rooms and working space with a black kitchen.

Headsman´s House is traditionally related to the adminstration of justice, execution and a prison. Whether it is true is not quite clear. According to some sources, a town catchpoll would live in this house in the 19th century and there was also a jail.

In several documents it is mentioned that it used to be a town executioner´s house in the 16th and 17th century.

Expositions:
1. The „Master of justice - the headsman“ exhibition is devoted to the world around the public executioner in the XVI-XVIII centuries.
2. The second exhibition „Craft, guilds and guild establishment“ shows the work of guilds in Trenčín and its surroundings.
3. The exhibition „The townspeople, how they lived...“ shows the housing and everyday life of townspeople in the period after 1850 up to the inter-war period (1930s).