Former Franciscan Church and Monastery in Pyzdry

On an escarpment above the Warta, a few steps from the market square in Pyzdry, stands one of only three surviving medieval Franciscan complexes in Greater Poland. The brick church and monastery were built around 1339 on the initiative of King Casimir the Great, after the Teutonic Knights had burned the earlier buildings. Today the Church of the Beheading of St John the Baptist still serves worshippers, while the former monastery houses the Pyzdry Land Regional Museum, with cloisters covered in old wall paintings.

History: from the Teutonic Knights to dissolution

The church is first mentioned in 1277. In 1331, after a Polish defeat, the army of the Teutonic Order burned Pyzdry, sparing neither church nor monastery. The brick rebuilding under Casimir the Great gave the complex the Gothic form still visible despite later changes. After a fire in 1589 the local nobility restored the church, and after the Swedish wars, in 1690, the monastery was given its Baroque four-wing layout around an inner garth. The towers were added in 1735–1756. After the January Uprising, the Russian authorities dissolved the order in 1864, and around 1910 the church interior was renovated to a design by Aleksander Przewalski.

What to see

• The Gothic body of the church with Baroque towers, best seen from the Warta side.
• Sail vaults in the nave, built after damage in 1768, and double rows of windows.
• The Chapel of Our Lady of Consolation on the north side of the nave, merged into the monastery wing.
• Cloisters with wall paintings – the museum uncovered and opened a set of late-medieval and Baroque frescoes.
• The garth – the monastery's inner courtyard with a statue of the Virgin.

The museum in the monastery

The Pyzdry museum was founded in 1957 and moved into the former monastery in 1985, occupying the refectory, the monastery kitchen and the cellars. Exhibits include the skull of a musk ox from about 35,000 years ago, bones of a mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, the oldest guild charter from 1531 issued by King Sigismund the Old, and mementoes of the January Uprising battle near Pyzdry on 29 April 1863. There is also a replica of a 14th-century cannon – a reminder that the siege of Pyzdry in 1383 is the first recorded use of a cannon on Polish soil.

Tripto tip

The museum (ul. Kaliska 25A) opens Tuesday to Sunday; according to its website, in season (May–September) it is open 10:00–17:00 Tuesday to Friday and 13:00–17:00 at weekends, with shorter hours off-season. The church is a filial church of the local parish, so the interior is easiest to see around services or by arrangement; check with the museum before you come that the cloisters are open. Allow about 1.5 hours for the church, cloisters and exhibitions. Afterwards, take the steps down towards the Warta – from there you can best see how the complex rises above the valley.