Churches & monasteries

St. Martin’s Church in Krzeszowice

On Grunwaldzka Street in Krzeszowice, between Kraków and Katowice, rises the neo-Gothic church of St. Martin — designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the celebrated architect of Berlin. The founder was Artur Potocki, heir of Krzeszowice after his grandmother Izabela Lubomirska, who commissioned the first plans in 1819.

The commission originally went to the most fashionable architects of Europe — Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine of Paris — but their designs were never executed. The final draft was prepared by Schinkel in 1823. Construction began in 1832, was interrupted by the founder’s death and resumed in 1840 under the builder Hoffbauer. The church was blessed in 1844, its furnishings were completed by 1872, and the canonical consecration followed in 1874. In 1921 Countess Krystyna Potocka handed the church over to the parish.

The neo-Gothic body is brick, with a facade faced in light ashlar sandstone and crowned by figures of the four evangelists. Inside, note the altars of varicoloured marble imported from Italy and the late-16th-century painting „Adoration of the Magi” in the main altar. Next door flows the Zdrój Główny spring, and the former spa park stretches above the Krzeszówka stream.