of 42 hostages, all Montelupich prisoners who died on the spot before a firing squad on 23 November 1943. After World War II, Montelupich became a Soviet prison where NKVD and Urząd Bezpieczeństwa tortured and murdered Polish soldiers of the Home Army. At present, the building serves as a temporary arrest and detention facility for men and women, with 158 jail cells and a prison hospital with additional 22 cells. History of the property The building housing the prison was not originally constructed for its purpose, but instead, was a historical property that was redecorated in the Italianate Renaissance style in 1556 by the Italian Montelupi family who introduced the first postal service in Poland for the court of Sigismund III Vasa. Their Kraków manor house, known in Polish as the Kamienica Montelupich (Palazzo Montelupi in Italian), at Number 7 of the street to which it gave the name, was the starting point of the first international postal coach in Poland which departed from here for Venice in 1558. The Jalu Kurek Park (see Park Jalu Kurka) in Krakow was formerly the palace garden of the palazzo Montelupi. Current status The prison was the site of the last administration of the death penalty in Poland, performed by hanging on 21 April 1988. Despite being officially recognized as both a historical monument and a place of martyrdom, the facility continues to be operated to this day as a combination of remand prison and ordinary correctional facility by the Polish Prison Administration (the Służba Więzienna), a unit of the Polish Justice Ministry. Its current official name is Areszt Śledczy w Krakowie. The infamous history of this facility continues to the present day, as evident in the 2008 death of the Romanian detainee, Claudiu Crulic (19752008; see Claudiu Crulic), an incident condemned by human rights groups (such as the Human Rights House Foundation of Oslo, Norway) which occasioned the resignation of the Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister, Adrian Cioroianu. Vincent A. Lapomarda writes in his book on the Nazi terror thatOn inquiring about Montelupich, on Montelupi Street, when I was in Krakow on 18 August 1986, I was able to view it from outside and learned that even today, while still operating, it has not lost the evil reputation that it had during the Nazi occupation. Notable inmates Józef Archutowski (18791944; professor of theology, long-term Dean of the Theology Department of the Jagiellonian University;