Door is a link between the external world and private space. It separated the sacrum from profanum space in medieval cathedrals. Later on it was a visiting card and a symbol of ennoblement of their owners. Hence, in the Art Nouveau period its appearance and ornaments, unlike nowadays, were of prime importance. Apart from the designer, craftsmen of various specialities, such as bricklayers and masons, woodcarvers and stucco plasterers took care of the shape and artistic expression of the door. Besides, the contribution of representatives of other professions, who completed the task by glazing the door, often using the stained-glass art, whereas artistic locksmiths, apart from necessary hinges and locks, often added decorative fittings, signs, and door handles which influenced the final result, was necessary.
Depending on the epoch, the entrance door received decorative portals and framings, whose architectonic design differed. In case of the Art Nouveau portals variety of solutions attracts one's attention. Sometimes they obtained a framing referring to some extent to historic styles, but modernized in the Art Nouveau way. A beautiful portal of the Wrocław tenement house in Norwida Street, in which the door is accompanied on its sides by the Neo-Romanesque columns, may serve as an example. A similar solution was applied in Rappaport's palace in Łódź, but in Wrocław the entirety was additionally placed in a squat horseshoe arch, as a result of which the omega letter shape characteristic for Art Nouveau was created. The form of this type is also visible in the building of the Bydgoszcz Municipal Cultural Centre presented in the first chapter. The entrance to the tenement house at the corner of Wojska Polskiego and Targowa Streets in Bielsko-Biała, where a wine bar was once located, is distinguished by unique extravagance. Apart from the framing of omega type, it was decorated with a fully artistic depiction of frogs in nonchalant poses, dressed in tailcoats, with one smoking a pipe and gorging itself on wine, and the other one playing the mandolin.
Transom windows of different shapes, sometimes constructed in the form of independent small windows with more or less richly decorated framing, were located in many cases over doors. Transom windows were often decorated with stained glass works. Some of them were created by top artists, such as Stanisław Wyspiański, who designed, e.g. a stained-glass window with irises in the Pokutyński Palace in Cracow, presented in the part dedicated to floral details.
Apart from entrance doors, interior doors were also carefully designed, e.g. the doors in the former tuberculosis sanatorium in Trzebiechów. This is a work by the world-famous artist Henry van de Velde, which is close to the design in the contemporary sense. Its simple geometric forms devoid of woodcarving elements are an example of modern, as for those times, way of thinking of the interior design, and may serve as a model even for contemporary designers.
Most of the doors from the Art Nouveau period constitute a display of carpentry, woodcarving and sometimes even artistic metalwork craftsmanship. The variety of shapes and ornaments, most frequently given to them together with floral motifs, whose selection is placed here, may amaze. Inspiration with Podhale region motifs is also a characteristic feature of the Cracovian art. They may be found in the door to the Barefoot Carmelite Nuns convent designed by Franciszek Mączyński, as well as in the eaves and the entrance door to the Old Theatre itself.
Unfortunately, many examples of doors have not been preserved till now, they have been replaced with their contemporary plastic substitutes which often distort the coherent composition of Art Nouveau buildings in which such details as windows and doors played as important a part as other details.