Landmark
Church of St Elizabeth
The Gothic church by the Rynek: a fourteenth-century basilica whose tower and interior burned in 1975 and 1976, and which took more than twenty years to rebuild.
What it is
St Elizabeth’s is a three-aisled Gothic basilica, built in the fourteenth century by the Rynek. Its tower, finished in the mid-fifteenth century, now measures more than 90 metres according to the parish.
A church that changed hands
In 1525 the church became a Protestant one. Since 1946 it has been a Catholic garrison church.
Fire and rebuilding
Burned in 1975 and 1976.
In September 1975 the tower caught fire and its top collapsed. In June 1976 a further fire damaged the roof and much of the furnishings and destroyed the Baroque organs by Michael Engler the Younger.
Rebuilding took more than two decades. Pope John Paul II rededicated the church on 31 May 1997.