St Margaret and St Judith’s Church

The only historic building of its type: the wooden church of St Margaret and St Judith covered in shingles stands in Bł. Bronisławy Street in the district of Zwierzyniec. Tradition speaks of a pre-Slavic pagan shrine standing on the site but the origins of the Christian chapel in this place are not known. Today’s church was built by the efforts of the Premonstratensian Abbess, Justyna Oraczewska in 1680-1690 as the former one was destroyed by Swedes during the invasion of 1655. The octagonal church is one of Poland’s few wooden constructions with a design in the round.

The church cemetery served to bury people who died during the numerous pandemics since for centuries, merciless “pestilential airs” attacked people living in all major cities. The most dangerous of these was the onslaught of the cholera, which infested the city in 1707, decimating the residents. Those infected were transported out of Kraków’s city limits, which in most cases meant Błonia Common Green, where they were to wait for their healing in makeshift shelters, yet what awaited them far more often was death. The deceased were then brought to the hill, and buried in deep pits, under a layer of quicklime: the only available disinfectant. After a few decades, the remnants were moved to the nearby cemetery adjacent to the Church of the Holy Saviour.