Holy Trinity Church in Korfantów

From the outside, Holy Trinity Church on Opolska Street in Korfantów looks like an early 20th-century building. That is only half the story: the building remodelled in 1909 hides a granite portal from around 1300, and the parish has existed since at least 1335. Look closely at the entrance and the furnishings and you can trace seven centuries of a small Silesian town.

History: from Gothic church to the 1909 rebuild

The church was built around the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, when Korfantów (called Friedland until 1946) was a young settlement. In 1335 a papal nuncio recorded the town and its parish in a tithe register. In the 16th century the town's owner, Adam Gotsch, handed the church to the Protestants; their pastor Georgius Fabricius served here for 58 years and died in 1622 while preaching a sermon. Catholics regained the church in 1629. The tower went up in the mid-18th century, and in 1909 the church was thoroughly rebuilt into its present form.

What to see

The municipality lists these as the most valuable features:

• the granite main portal from around 1300, the oldest surviving trace of the Gothic church,
• a tombstone from 1591,
• the tomb of Henryk Wacław Nowagk from 1682,
• the tower from 1751,
• 18th- and 19th-century processional candlesticks of the craft guilds, a marble font and a 19th-century crucifix.

Nowagk died on 28 April 1681 during the plague of 1680–1681, which killed about 180 residents, roughly a third of the town. His tomb is also a reminder of that disaster.

Tripto tip

Allow 20–30 minutes for the exterior and the portal. This is a working parish church, so the interior is easiest to see just before or after services. On the same walk you can see the castle complex from 1616 with its gatehouse and park, where three protected pedunculate oaks grow, and the early 20th-century town hall on the market square. At the corner of Prudnicka and Kościuszki streets stands a monolithic stone cross, thought to be one of the oldest monuments in town.