St Nicholas' Church

One of the oldest and most interesting of Kraków’s churches, it is situated by an ancient trade route leading from Kraków to Sandomierz, and further east to Ruthenia and Ukraine. (Interestingly, in the Eastern Church, St Nicholas is venerated as the patron saint of all Ruthenia and of travellers.) The earliest mentions of the church date back to the first half of the 13th century, it is mentioned in a papal bull of 1229 as the property of the Benedictines from Tyniec. The monks transferred it to Kraków Academy in 1467. Initially Romanesque, it acquired a Gothic shape after the fire of 1376 and was rebuilt in 1677-1682 after being burnt by the Swedes laying siege to the city. Since the 16th century, it has been the parish church of the settlement known as Wesoła.

The church we see today features modest baroque forms, apart from the Gothic chancel reinforced with buttresses which conceals the foundations of the earliest, Romanesque church. The three-aisled interior contains furnishing from the 16th to the 18th centuries, including the late Gothic pentaptych altar with the scene of the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This altar is noteworthy as a famous work of Kraków painters from the end of the 15th century who moved here from the destroyed St Gertrude’s church (commemorated to this day in the name of the street). Eyes turn to the bronze font from 1536, the late Renaissance tomb made of white marble, and a stepped Gothic portal in the sacristy.

There is a very rare curio in the former cemetery that used to surround the church, namely, a 14th-century Gothic figure by the roadside known as the lantern of the dead. Such lanterns were frequently built, especially in the Middle Ages, in front of hospitals, almshouses, leper colonies, and cemeteries: in a word, wherever the passers-by could be in danger of contracting a disease. This one warned you that you were stepping over the threshold of the St Valentine leper hospital, which was situated in today’s Kleparz district until 1818. The lantern was transferred to today’s site in 1871.

Another unusual object on the premises of St Nicholas is the khachkar, that is the Cross-Stone, which in the Armenian culture is a traditional way of reminding us of important historical events and the deceased. The khachkar in Kraków commemorates the Armenians who have lived in Poland since the 14th century. The monument is also devote to the victims of the genocide committed on 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey in 1915. Every year, on the anniversary of this genocide (24th April), a holy mass in the Armenian rite, always attended by the Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia to Poland, is celebrated here by Rev Tadeusz Zaleski, the pastor of the Armenians in Poland.