Church of St Catherine of Alexandria in Wilkowisko

In the centre of Wilkowisko, the largest village in the Jodłownik district, beside the Owsianka stream, stands the wooden Church of St Catherine of Alexandria – the third church on this site. Its predecessor was destroyed by a great fire on 28 January 1916, and the present one was built in the following years on its model. Although the building itself is just over a century old, it holds much older treasures: a 15th-century crucifix, an early 18th-century painting and a Baroque altar brought from Limanowa. The church lies on the Lesser Poland Wooden Architecture Route.

History: a parish older than its church

The parish of Wilkowisko was founded in 1328, just four years after the village was chartered under German law in the reign of Władysław the Elbow-High. The first church was built in 1337–1338 and was described by Jan Długosz in his "Liber beneficiorum". Another church was funded around 1521 by the village owner, Mikołaj Jordan of Zakliczyn – it was this one that burned down in 1916. Sources differ on when the present church was built: either 1917–1923 or 1921–1927. It was consecrated on 25 December 1923, and the parish has recently celebrated the centenary of its consecration. The largest renovation since construction took place in 1997.

What to see

• Log construction clad with horizontal boarding, with a single nave, a three-sided chancel and a former patron's box above the sacristy.
• A square tower crowned with a bulbous Baroque cupola, and a small lantern-topped bell turret on the roof.
• An interior lined with wooden panelling under a false barrel vault.
• The late-Baroque high altar from the old church in Limanowa, with an early 18th-century painting of Our Lady of Good Care and an image of St Catherine at the top.
• A 15th-century crucifix preserved from the earlier churches.
• Side altars made in 1926–1935 by Antoni Wróbel, a neo-Baroque pulpit from 1926 and a stone font from the early 20th century.
• Dates from the parish history carved above the entrance to the sacristy.

Did you know?

Two bells from the 16th and 17th centuries hang in the tower, and the cemetery beside the church was founded in 1848. From 1880 Wilkowisko belonged to Adolf Przerwa-Tetmajer; his son Włodzimierz Tetmajer, a painter and half-brother of the poet Kazimierz, often stayed here. He first came in summer 1883, aged 22, straight from the Tatra Mountains, and at first the village did not impress him – over time, however, the Beskid landscape shaped his sensitivity to rural culture. According to local tradition, the village's name comes from wolves (Polish "wilki") said to have attacked a merchant caravan hurrying to Szczyrzyc; all that was left of the unfortunate travellers, so the story goes, were their high boots.

Tripto tips

This is a working parish church with no set visiting hours – the easiest way to see the interior is before or after Mass, or by contacting the parish in advance. Half an hour is enough for the church. Add a walk up Dział hill (554 m), where a tall stone cross has stood since 1950, offering a panorama of the Beskid Wyspowy. In the hamlet of Zagórze, on the southern slope of Dział, there is a stone wayside shrine from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, built on the site of a former cholera cemetery.