Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary in Złotoryja

Złotoryja holds the oldest town charter in Poland, granted in 1211 by Duke Henry the Bearded, and its parish church is only a little younger. The Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary is one of only about twenty town parish churches in Silesia dating back to the first half of the 13th century. It was being built while gold was still panned from the local streams.

History: three building phases

It is very likely that townspeople began building the church before 1211, with the support of Henry the Bearded. The foundations of the chancel and transept came first; three semicircular apses were planned, but the design changed and the chancel received a five-sided end. Around 1270 the Knights Hospitaller took over patronage of the church and shaped its extensions and renovations for centuries. In later phases the planned basilica became a hall church, with further nave bays, the main portal and a west tower. The Renaissance and the Reformation also left their mark.

Since 2014 the church has been a Local Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes.

What to see

• The south portal – columns with chalice capitals and a semicircular archivolt. Two portals in the transept served as entrances, a solution unknown elsewhere in Polish Romanesque architecture.
• Masks on the capitals of the north transept – in the Middle Ages they symbolised the evil lurking outside the church walls.
• Tracery and a rose window in the transept, showing Westphalian influence. Several Gothic features, tracery among them, were used here earlier than anywhere else in Poland.
• The interior with a Renaissance pulpit, epitaphs, galleries and a 17th–18th-century altar, plus the church's only image of its patroness, on the vault.
• The symbolic tomb of Valentin Trotzendorf in the chancel and an exhibition on the church and its Renaissance grammar school.
• The tower – from the top you see the town, the Kaczawskie Foothills and Mountains and the Karkonosze. The town's bugle call is played from here.

Did you know?

The church is built of fine-grained Upper Cretaceous sandstone. It is not aligned on the classic east–west axis but north-east to south-west. In the Middle Ages it was surrounded by a walled cemetery and a moat. Valentin Trotzendorf, regarded as Złotoryja's most distinguished son, ran a famous grammar school here in the 16th century; he is buried in Legnica.

Tripto tip

The church stands right by the market square, so it fits easily into a walk around the old town. Start with a circuit outside to find the masks and portals, then go inside and – if the tower is open – climb up for the panorama with the Karkonosze on the horizon. Allow about an hour. A few minutes away are the Smiths' Tower and, on the slope of St Nicholas Hill, the Aurelia Gold Mine.