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Churches & monasteries
Głogówek
In 1934 the painter Hans Breinlinger spent 30 days covering the walls of this church with four paintings, and the people of Głogówek paid him 3,000 marks in cash plus free lodging and board. The Holy Cross Church is a half-timbered buildin…
Churches & monasteries
Ozimek
Ozimek is known for the oldest cast-iron suspension bridge, but a few hundred metres away stands a second landmark tied to the Prussian ironworks and its people: a white Lutheran church designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Prussia's most f…
Churches & monasteries
Opole
The Franciscan Church in Opole, officially the Church of the Holy Trinity, is the burial place of the medieval Piast dukes of Opole and one of the most precious historic buildings in the city. Its St. Anne's Chapel, known as the Piast Chap…
Churches & monasteries
Głogówek
In 1633, during an epidemic, the authorities and townspeople of nearby Prudnik vowed that they and their descendants would forever make pilgrimages to the Loreto House in Głogówek. This faithful copy of the "Holy House" of Loreto in Italy…
Churches & monasteries
Ujazd
On the eastern edge of Ujazd, on the road to Pyskowice, stands a Gothic Revival church that locals have long called Studzionka, "the little well". The name comes from a spring beside which a wooden chapel stood in the 18th century; German-…
Churches & monasteries
Olesno
The pine trunk behind glass by the high altar bears a plaque dated "July 1444": under this tree, legend says, a girl was saved from robbers through the intercession of St Anne. A wooden church grew up around the pine, and in the 17th centu…
Churches & monasteries
Praszka
In Wierzbie, a village in the Praszka municipality on national road 45 between Wieluń and Opole, stands a wooden church whose log structure is dated to around 1522. It is a late Gothic church of the Wieluń type – a reminder that this north…
Churches & monasteries
Pawłowiczki
In the fields outside Gościęcin, next to a spring long believed to cure eye ailments, stands the wooden pilgrimage church of St Brice, built in 1661. Locals simply call the area with the church, the former hermitage and the chapels Bryksy.…
Churches & monasteries
Gogolin
The rood beam of the wooden church in Malnia still bears the German words "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" ("A mighty fortress is our God"), the opening line of Martin Luther's famous hymn. It is a reminder that the church was built for a P…
Churches & monasteries
Ujazd
St Andrew the Apostle Church in Ujazd (Strzelce County) looks like a 19th-century Gothic Revival church, but the lower parts of its towers and the walls of its nave hide the masonry of a 13th-century Romanesque church. The interior is Baro…
Churches & monasteries
Głogówek
St. Bartholomew's Church in Głogówek (say "gwo-GOO-vek"), a former collegiate church, is often called the "Pearl of the Opole Region". Behind its Gothic brick walls and twin towers lies one of the most spectacular Baroque and Rococo interi…
Churches & monasteries
Skarbimierz
From the outside it is "just" a red-brick Gothic church in a village near Brzeg. Inside, the walls, the chancel arch and the ceiling are covered with almost 1,000 m² of medieval painting – regarded as the largest ensemble of late-medieval…
Churches & monasteries
Baborów
The weathervane on the turret is cut with the date "1700" – the year building began. The wooden cemetery church of St Joseph in Baborów (listed in some heritage registers as the church of St Joseph and St Barbara) was built in 1700–1702 on…
Churches & monasteries
Olesno
Olesno's oldest church is nicknamed the "Church of Angels" – more than 50 depictions of angels have been counted inside. The Gothic Church of St Michael the Archangel, built after 1374, burned and was rebuilt many times, and one of its bel…
Churches & monasteries
Otmuchów
Above the market square of Otmuchów rises the twin-towered façade of the Church of St Nicholas and St Francis Xavier, built in 1690–1693 and funded by a Bishop of Wrocław. Inside is a coherent early Baroque interior with wall paintings by…
Churches & monasteries
Byczyna
St Nicholas' Church in Byczyna looks like an ordinary Gothic parish church of a small town, but around 1300 it was one of the most unusual buildings in the region. Lower walls of unworked stone, a brick chancel with rich carved decoration…
Churches & monasteries
Dąbrowa
In front of the Neoclassical church in Chróścina stands something much older: a squat 15th-century bell-tower gateway, built of brown bog iron ore and brick, with a pointed archway. For centuries it has been the way into the churchyard. Th…
Churches & monasteries
Nysa
The Church of Saints Peter and Paul on Bracka Street is considered the finest example of the Baroque in Nysa, a town once nicknamed the "Silesian Rome". Its vaults are covered in illusionistic paintings by the Scheffler brothers from 1730,…
Churches & monasteries
Korfantów
The date 1585 is carved above the tower door of the church in Ścinawa Nyska – a reminder of the Renaissance church of which only the tower survived. The rest was rebuilt in the 18th century in Baroque style, and the whole complex stands on…
Churches & monasteries
Głuchołazy
The little Church of St Roch in Głuchołazy is a memorial to the great plague epidemic that struck the town in the mid-14th century. A chapel was built here around 1350, and the present small church dates from 1626–1627. Its patron, St Roch…
Churches & monasteries
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 existe…
Churches & monasteries
Dąbrowa
On a rise in Dąbrowa, about 11 km west of Opole on the edge of the Niemodlin Forest, stands the Church of St Lawrence, partly ringed by old lime trees. The parish is one of the oldest documented in Upper Silesia: the local priest – "Nicola…
Churches & monasteries
Głuchołazy
The twin-towered parish church of St Lawrence stands by the market square in Głuchołazy, and its oldest feature dates back to the medieval town. The Early Gothic portal has survived every rebuilding and ranks among Silesia's notable monume…
Churches & monasteries
Skoroszyce
Locals simply call it the "church in the field". The neo-Gothic Church of the Finding of the Holy Cross and Our Lady of Częstochowa stands alone among fields and meadows, right by national road 46 from Nysa towards Niemodlin and Opole, abo…