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Churches & monasteries
Woźniki
In the cemetery of Woźniki, away from the market square, stands a small wooden church with a slender turret. This is where the parish's history began: a first church of St Valentine was recorded here as early as 1490, in the so-called old…
Churches & monasteries
Świerklaniec
In the northern part of the park in Świerklaniec, away from where the Donnersmarcks' "little Versailles" once stood, rises a neo-Gothic church linked by a cloister to the family mausoleum. The tomb's roof is crowned by an angel of beaten c…
Churches & monasteries
Pszczyna
On Pszczyna's Market Square, right next to the town hall, stands a church that burned down twice and came back twice, each time thanks to money from its congregation and the local princes. The Lutheran church is now a neo-Baroque building…
Churches & monasteries
Skoczów
Holy Trinity Church in Skoczów is a Neo-Gothic Lutheran church from 1863–1865, built on the Wilamowice hill above the town. Its slender tower with a pyramid spire can be seen from many parts of Skoczów, and the town's Lutheran parish, with…
Churches & monasteries
Tarnowskie Góry
The tall clock tower on the market square in Tarnowskie Góry does not belong to the town hall but to the Lutheran church. The Church of the Saviour is a neo-Romanesque church whose story goes back to the 18th century, when a Lutheran paris…
Churches & monasteries
Wielowieś
The wooden Church of St Lawrence in Zacharzowice is only about 15 m long and 6 m wide, and almost all of its structure dates from the 16th century. Tree-ring dating carried out in 2008 showed that the roof truss over the nave was set up an…
Churches & monasteries
Koszęcin
Koszęcin parish took out a loan to build this church and could not pay it back for well over a decade. Hyperinflation finally came to the rescue: in 1923 the rest of the debt was settled for the equivalent of eight loaves of bread. The bri…
Churches & monasteries
Świerklaniec
The brick church in Nakło Śląskie looks as if someone had combined a Romanesque Revival church with a Byzantine dome. It was founded by Count Lazarus IV Henckel von Donnersmarck, who paid about 90% of the building costs and had a family ma…
Churches & monasteries
Miasteczko Śląskie
The parishioners of Żyglin waited almost 40 years for permission to build this church. They applied in 1801, and approval from Berlin only came in 1838. The church, built of local limestone, went up in 1840–1842. It is an example of the ro…
Churches & monasteries
Zwardoń
At first glance it looks like two buildings joined together: a small brick chapel with a turret and a soaring structure with triangular gables clad in red metal. That is how the church in Zwardoń tells the story of a village that grew up a…
Churches & monasteries
Boronów
On the grille of a side chapel hangs a crucifix that, people in Boronów say, is slowly closing its eyes – and will shut them completely on the day the world ends. The Church of Our Lady Queen of the Holy Rosary in Boronów is a wooden churc…
Churches & monasteries
Pietrowice Wielkie
On the edge of Pietrowice Wielkie, on the road to Gródczanki, a small wooden church of the Holy Cross sits at the bottom of a ravine. It has drawn pilgrims for more than three centuries, and right beside it a spring rises in a Gothic Reviv…
Churches & monasteries
Wilamowice
On a cemetery hill in Stara Wieś near Wilamowice stands a wooden church whose construction date, 1522, has been confirmed by tree-ring dating. Shingled roofs, covered walkways around the walls and late Gothic portals with "donkey-back" arc…
Landmarks
Gilowice
The wooden Church of St Andrew the Apostle in Gilowice has moved house: it was built in the neighbouring village of Rychwałd, and in the mid-18th century it was taken apart and reassembled in the next village. Inside you will find a stone…
Churches & monasteries
Ustroń
On the northern edge of Ustroń, in the Nierodzim district, a dark, shingle-clad church dedicated to St Anne stands among old trees and gravestones. In summer it is easy to miss, yet it is the oldest church in Ustroń. The present building i…
Churches & monasteries
Koziegłowy
From the outside, St Barbara's Church in Koziegłowy looks modest: brick walls, a shingled roof and a small Baroque turret. Its shape hides an unusual story, though — today's nave was once a hospital for the poor, and the original little ch…
Churches & monasteries
Siewierz
The Church of St Barbara and St Valentine in Siewierz is a small masonry church from 1618, built through the efforts and money of the town's burghers for a hospital that had operated here since 1515. It stands south of the Market Square, i…
Churches & monasteries
Włodowice
Since the early 18th century a Baroque stone church on a hill (395 m above sea level) has towered over Włodowice on the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland. Before this masonry church was built, a succession of wooden churches burned and rose again…
Churches & monasteries
Kroczyce
The high altar of the church in Kroczyce is neither carved wood nor marble: it is a grotto modelled on the one at Lourdes, built from blocks of local calcite, a mineral once quarried in the surrounding Jurassic rocks. The twin-towered chur…
Churches & monasteries
Zabrze
In the mining town of Zabrze, building a church of wood was a matter of common sense, not nostalgia. When a church was planned in the late 1920s for more than 5,000 Catholics in the Poremba district, fear of mining subsidence settled it: a…
Churches & monasteries
gmina Pilica
The church above Pilica's market square has royal connections: when it was built, the town belonged to the Pilecki family, and Elżbieta of Pilcza, daughter of Otto and Jadwiga, became the third wife of King Władysław Jagiełło in 1417. Succ…
Churches & monasteries
Poraj
The church in Choroń stands on the ridge of the westernmost hill in the area, which is why its tower can be seen from many points in the northern Kraków-Częstochowa Upland. The road beside it is one of the best viewpoints over the Poraj Re…
Churches & monasteries
Olsztyn
The stones of Olsztyn's church were, until the early 18th century, part of the castle walls on the neighbouring rock. The Baroque Church of St John the Baptist was built in 1722–1729 from material taken from the ruins. In its crypt, behind…
Churches & monasteries
Goczałkowice-Zdrój
For more than two centuries the church in Goczałkowice was in Protestant hands: in 1569 Baron Karl von Promnitz, lord of Pszczyna (Pless), declared his whole estate Lutheran, and an independent Catholic parish was only restored in 1797. To…