Churches & monasteries

Church of St. James the Apostle in Małujowice

In Małujowice, seven kilometres from Brzeg, stands the brick-and-stone Gothic church of St. James the Apostle — a Monument of History since 2022 and the scene of one of the most celebrated discoveries of medieval art in Poland. Its walls hold nearly 1,000 m² of paintings: the largest ensemble of medieval frescoes in the country.

The church was raised around 1250 on the initiative of Duke Henry III the White; after 1266 the works were continued by Henry IV Probus. The presbytery came first, the nave was added at the end of the 13th century, and the tower in the 14th, heightened in the 16th. A stone wall from the 15th century encloses it all. On the chancel arch you will see the Last Judgement — an original vision that earned the church the nickname of the „Silesian Sistine”.

The 14th-century frescoes fill the nave: one wall tells the Old Testament, the other the New, and 96 scenes form Poland’s largest medieval cycle of the Biblia pauperum. Among them stands out the Crucifixion of Christ by the Virtues — only 12 such images are known worldwide, three of them in Poland. Note also the Gothic portal with the Coronation of the Virgin, the Adoration of the Magi and statues of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, and the 16th-century wooden ceiling with over 600 painted boards — no two share the same motif.

In 1817, when the church belonged to Protestants, the paintings were plastered over; the oldest, early-Gothic frescoes from the 13th century, by an artist of the Prague school, were discovered in the attic in 1964. Today the church was voted among the „7 New Wonders of Poland” by National Geographic Traveler, and the interior can be visited by appointment.