St Joseph Church - the Discalced Carmelites

A monastic church situated on the western slope of św. Wojciecha (St Adalbert) Hill. This was where St George's Church stood from the middle of the 14th century till the end of the 16th. Later there was a Czech friars temple here, destroyed in 1616. Two years later the Carmelites settled here and built a wooden chapel. The present church was built between 1644-77. The work was initially overseen by Krzysztof Bonadura senior, and after his death (around 1667) by Jerzy Catenazzi. The monastery adjacent to the church was built in stages - the work started in 1685 and was completed in the 1770's. In 1831 the Prussian authorities closed down the monastery. In 1831 the church, whose interior had been rebuilt according to a project by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, became an evangelical garrison church. After Poland regained its independence, it became a catholic garrison church (the galleries built by the protestants were demolished.) In 1945 the Carmelites returned to the damaged buildings.
The Baroque three - nave church was built on the base of a cross. Its beautifully proportioned facade is divided by cover profiles and cornices and has decorative niches for statues. The interior owes its look to the general reconstruction done between 1984-88. Much older are the remnants of the tombstone from the grave of Wojciech Konarzewski dating from the second half of the 17th century. The pulpit was built in 1962 from fragments of an old pulpit found in a former evangelical church in Obrzycko and sculptures brought from Silesia. Next to the church there is a monastic building with a small garth. It houses the Higher Seminary of Discalced Carmelites of Our Lady from Mt Carmel, affiliated to the Papal Faculty of Theology in Poznań.

This article has more than one page. Choose below next page, to read further