St Andrew the Apostle Church in Ujazd

St Andrew the Apostle Church in Ujazd (Strzelce County) looks like a 19th-century Gothic Revival church, but the lower parts of its towers and the walls of its nave hide the masonry of a 13th-century Romanesque church. The interior is Baroque and Neoclassical, with an altar by Bernard Kutzer, Rococo side altars and an 1849 organ by Johann Haas, while right next door stand the ruins of the castle of the Bishops of Wrocław.

History: from Romanesque stronghold to Gothic Revival towers

The church was built after the town received its charter in the mid-13th century as a fortified Romanesque church of brick and stone with two towers. The lower parts of both towers with the porch and the nave walls up to the height of the transept survive from it, as confirmed by surveys commissioned by the Society of Friends of Ujazd. In the 14th century the nave was extended eastwards, and in the 15th century a south chapel was added. In 1609 the town passed to Mikołaj Kochcicki, who rebuilt the church in Baroque style in 1613 and was buried in its crypt. In 1863 the wooden tops of the towers were replaced with brick Gothic Revival ones with pointed spires, and in 1933 the nave was extended by one bay.

What to see inside

• The high altar of 1826–1833, by sculptor Bernard Kutzer and painter Karl Steckel: free-standing and oval, with six columns and figures of St Andrew and Saints Peter and Paul.
• Kutzer also made the pulpit and the canopy of the marble font with a Baptism in the Jordan group, both dating from 1826.
• Two Rococo side altars from 1759: a Marian altar with a painting from around 1600 funded by the Kochcicki family, and an altar of the Passion with the Man of Sorrows.
• The Johann Haas organ from Baborów, built in 1849 with fully mechanical action, and two bronze Kochcicki heraldic plaques in the chancel.

Did you know

The founder's wife, Anna Maria von Maltitz, stipulated in her will that the family's figure of St Anne with the Virgin and Child be carried in procession to Chełm Hill. Since then the hill has been called St Anne's Mountain (Góra Świętej Anny), and the figure still stands in the basilica there. In 1536 the Gothic church was sketched by an artist travelling with Prince Ottheinrich of Wittelsbach, who spent a night in Ujazd on his way to Kraków. In front of the church stands a Rococo statue of St Joseph with the Christ Child from 1744, by Johann Melchior Oesterreich. The two bells in use, cast in 1955 and 1963, came from a closed church in Wuppertal.

Tripto tips

• This is a working parish church. Sunday Masses are at 8:00, 9:30 (sometimes in German), 11:00 and 18:00, and on weekdays daily at 18:00, so the interior is easiest to see just before or after a service.
• Allow about half an hour for the church and its surroundings, and the same again for the ruins of the Renaissance castle of the Bishops of Wrocław from 1580, right next door.
• The Renaissance painting of the Virgin with Saints Barbara and Dorothy that once adorned the church is now in the Diocesan Museum in Opole.