Holy Cross Church in Żywiec

The low, plastered church with shingled roofs in Rudza, the oldest part of Żywiec, predates the founding of the town on its present site: Holy Cross Church was built around 1380. Locals call it the church of the "Three Crosses", after the figures of Christ and the two thieves fixed to the outer wall of the apse. Around the church you can still find traces of the old churchyard, where the town court's sentences were carried out for centuries.

History: from Hussites to barracks

In the early 15th century the church briefly fell to the Hussites; in 1428 it returned to the Catholics and was reconsecrated by the Bishop of Kraków. In 1679 the old half-timbered nave was pulled down and replaced by the present, much larger one, and in 1690 parish priest Wojciech Symellius added a round apse to the chancel. In the 18th century the interior took on a Baroque character.

The most turbulent years came after 1790. The Austrian authorities, who then ruled this part of Poland, closed the church and auctioned it off to the town's owner, Elżbieta Wielopolska. The town contested the sale, and at a second auction in 1801 the church was bought, with municipal money, by Marcin Rybarski, a burgher nominated by the council. During the Napoleonic Wars the building served as barracks for some 400 soldiers, as a food store and as a military hospital. Restoration for worship began in 1826; the Gethsemane chapel followed in 1878 and the tower with its porch in 1910. Today it is a branch church of the co-cathedral parish of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary.

What to see outside and inside

• Three crosses on the apse – the church's trademark, best seen from the east.
• The stone "Boża Męka" column of 1618 (a wayside Passion column), funded by townswoman Zofia Kiełzak – the oldest of its kind in the Żywiec region, on the north side of the church.
• A stone cross (87 cm) from the grave of Michał Gnidka, executed in the 17th century for theft and disobedience to his parents; it was set up by his parents.
• A statue of St John of Nepomuk from 1717 by the churchyard fence.
• Inside: a flattened barrel vault, the Baroque painting "Christ Carrying the Cross", an "Ecce Homo" from 1826, a Gothic crucifix from before the mid-15th century and stained glass in the apse from 1910, designed by Stefan Witold Matejko.

Did you know?

In the 17th and 18th centuries people sentenced by the town court were beheaded in the churchyard and buried near the church – hence Gnidka's stone cross. The churchyard was closed after 1784, when Emperor Joseph II banned burials inside built-up areas. The Rieger organ, probably from the 1920s, uses wooden pipes to carry air instead of metal ones, a legacy of lead shortages during the First World War. Between 1942 and 1945 the German occupiers set up a separate parish here for German worshippers.

The Madonna with a Strawberry at the Old Castle

The church's finest Gothic furnishings went to the Żywiec Town Museum. The panel painting "Lamentation" from around 1450, linked to the workshop of the Master of the Chomranice Lamentation, was handed to the museum in 1936; on its gold background you can spot a rooster, 30 pieces of silver and a ladder – instruments of the Passion. The museum also holds a sculpture of St Anne with the Virgin and Child from around 1380 and the panel Madonna with a Strawberry from the third quarter of the 15th century. The Germans took these works away in 1941; they were found in Bytom in 1947.

Tripto tip

The church stands on ul. Świętokrzyska, a few minutes' walk from the Market Square. You can see the exterior, the crosses and the column at any time; the interior is easiest to visit around services. The church itself takes 15–20 minutes, but it pays to combine it with the Town Museum in the Old Castle – that is where you will see the Gothic paintings that hung here for centuries. Żywiec is reachable by train or car from Bielsko-Biała; leave the car in the centre and explore on foot, combining the church with the Market Square, the co-cathedral and the castle park.