Low entrance hall and entrance hall

The low entrance hall is the first interior in the representative part of the Palace. The cross vault is decorated here with a beautiful motif of a vine, which in the Middle Ages was the most important among symbolic plants (it was an attribute of Christ, a symbol of the Eucharist, according to the Gospel, Christ referred to himself as a vine, from which true disciples grow like twigs from a vine). stands for a part of the Vestibule, reconstructed in the first half of the 19th century. On the north wall, above the entrance to the private apartments of the great masters, there is a painted coat of arms of the Jungingen family, from which the two highest dignitaries of the Order came – Konrad and Ulryk. Most of these paintings were created at the beginning of the 15th century, and were mainly made by the court painter, Master Piotr. The vaults were usually decorated with a lush vine or acanthus vine, while the walls featured various motifs: figural, ornamental, sometimes heraldic.

The low entrance hall opens onto the castle courtyard with a series of rectangular windows, framed by stone window crosses. In one of such window groups, the main entrance to the first floor of the Palace was located in the Middle Ages, by stairs straight from the courtyard. Today, the stone framing of this entrance is displayed on the side wall of the porch of the chapel of the great masters. The entrance hall, formerly called the corner room, because from the 19th century it was separated from the Low Hall by a wall. During the restoration of the Palace interiors in 1999, the wall was demolished, revealing the original layout of the rooms in the initial section of the representative route through the Palace.

Currently, together with the Low Siena, which opens with a high, pointed arcade, it forms a unique complex with the function of a vestibule. The room is covered with a rib vault, supported by two slender granite columns. In the eastern and southern walls there are a dozen or so rectangular window openings, which perfectly illuminate the interior, from where the visitors’ journey to the representative halls of the great masters on the west side began.