Ruins of St Nicholas' Church in Łeba

In a pine wood on the western bank of the Łeba river stands a lone fragment of brick wall. It is all that remains above ground of a medieval town – Old Łeba, destroyed by storms and buried by sand. Słowiński National Park calls the ruins of the Gothic St Nicholas' Church from the 14th century the oldest monument in town, and one of the most popular trails to the Łącka Dune starts right beside them.

The town that lost to the sea

Medieval Łeba received town rights under Lübeck law in 1357, when it belonged to the Teutonic Order's state, and grew on this site until the 16th century. The coastline then lay further from the town than it does today. A series of violent storms in the 15th and 16th centuries, together with the shifting river bed, gradually forced the inhabitants to move. The storm of 11 January 1558 destroyed the harbour and buildings and pushed the river mouth one and a half kilometres east; another in 1570 convinced the townspeople to start again on the other side of the river, where the centre of today's Łeba lies.

St Nicholas' – dedicated to the patron saint of fishermen and sailors – was the parish church of Old Łeba, probably a single-nave building with a tower. Abandoned after the disaster, it was demolished around 1560. Some of its material was reused for the Baroque Church of the Assumption, built in 1683 in the new town. The old townsite was buried by dunes that were later overgrown by forest.

Why the wall survived

Throughout the post-war decades the ruin lay within the protective dune belt and the Maritime Office's technical strip, where building was forbidden. That is why it was left untouched, while more distant parts of the old town were built over with holiday resorts. Between 2015 and 2019 the town of Łeba commissioned research: first ground-penetrating radar, then excavations several metres deep, down to the foundations. Archaeologists traced the probable outline of the church and found numerous burials inside and outside it; after conservation the finds went to the museum in Lębork. The wall was stabilised, the site was entered in the heritage register and the trenches were backfilled.

What to see

On site you see the surviving fragment of brick wall, with clearly visible courses of brick and the outline of a niche, standing in a fenced area among the pines. Bear in mind that the church probably stood at the heart of the medieval town – everything around you was once streets and houses, now beneath the dunes. Photographic documentation of the excavations can be viewed at the Łeba Municipal Library.

Tripto tip

The ruins stand in the open and are free to visit; the stop itself takes 10–15 minutes, but it makes a good start for the national park's loop "Old Łeba – seashore – Łącka Dune – Old Łeba" (about 15 km, roughly 3 hours of walking without breaks). Almost half the route runs along the beach and the rest through coastal pine forest, passing the museum in the former rocket launch site at Rąbka and an observation tower. Within the park the trail is open from an hour before sunrise to an hour after sunset, and an entrance fee applies. In the evening, visit the Church of the Assumption in the centre – its walls hide bricks from Old Łeba.