Churches & monasteries

Church of the Assumption in Praszka

At 22 Senatorska Street stands the town's most important church — the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, belonging to the Archdiocese of Częstochowa and serving today as a Marian sanctuary. The parish's history reaches back to the late Middle Ages: the first mention of a wooden church dates to 1392, when King Władysław II Jagiełło granted Praszka the privilege of building a town and a temple.

From wood to stone

The wooden church served the faithful for almost five centuries — a masonry sacristy was added in 1720, and the old building was only demolished in 1871. Construction of the present church began in 1872 to a design by Anzelm Dobromir Krysiński; the first services were held on the first Sunday of Advent 1873, and the consecration followed on 2 June 1884 at the hands of Bishop Aleksander Kazimierz Bereśniewicz. In the early 20th century the church gained two side aisles connected by arcades and taller towers crowned with domes.

Wartime and the sanctuary

During the Second World War the occupier turned the church into a warehouse and stripped it of liturgical objects, and the local curate Fr Leon Poprawa was sent to the Dachau concentration camp. After the war the building took years to restore; in 1996–1998 the interior and the wall paintings of 1952–1953 by Aleksander Trojkowicz were renewed. In a side chapel the faithful venerate the image of Our Lady, Queen of the Holy Rosary, from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries — the painting that gave the church the rank of a sanctuary. Relics of St Valentine are also kept here.

In the area

Not far from the church stands a historic steam locomotive with a carriage, a memento of the local narrow-gauge railway that carried passengers until 1987.