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Churches & monasteries
Nysa
In 1619 a census of parishioners decided whether the church would stay Catholic or pass to the Protestants – the Catholics won by just three people. The Basilica of St James and St Agnes in Nysa, which locals have called the "cathedral" fo…
Churches & monasteries
Prudnik
On Piastowska Street, in the western part of Prudnik's Old Town, stands the Baroque monastery complex of the Brothers Hospitallers – an order that has been caring for the sick here since 1766. It began as a story of gratitude: a colonel, b…
Churches & monasteries
Góra Świętej Anny
St. Anne's Mountain (Góra Świętej Anny, roughly "GOO-rah shvyen-TAY AH-nee") is a Franciscan pilgrimage shrine with a baroque basilica, a monastery and a hillside Calvary, set on top of an extinct volcano in Poland's Opole region. It is th…
Churches & monasteries
Olesno
The neo-Baroque Corpus Christi Church, with its pale, multi-storey tower, stands just off the centre of Olesno. Built in 1909–1913 on the site of a 15th-century wooden church, it is surprisingly grand: a monumental building on a Latin-cros…
Churches & monasteries
Kluczbork
From the outside it is a severe Gothic church of brick and stone; inside it surprises with a bright white-and-gold interior in the Rococo spirit. The Church of Christ the Saviour on Gdacjusz Square is the oldest church in Kluczbork and has…
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
Brzeg
Brzeg's oldest church has not been used for worship for almost five centuries. The Gothic Franciscan church, first recorded in 1285, was turned into an arsenal, then a warehouse, a fire station and a furniture shop, and in 1997 a flood bro…
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,…