Not Only Cathedrals: An In-Depth Look at Polish Gothic Architecture
Most of us, when hearing the word 'gothic', conjure up the image of soaring cathedral towers. In the territories of Poland, the Gothic style rarely took such spectacular forms, but managed to develop several interesting variations of its own. Even an amateur eye can spot the differences between Silesian and Pomeranian Gothic.
The Romanesque buildings were coarse and dark, the Gothic ones gained lightness, their interiors were full of light, there were also more details that made them more decorative.
A peculiar dematerialization of the building, achieved mainly through the elimination of the wall as the basic structural and filling element, and in its place the introduction of a skeletal structure, composed of slender pillars connected by ogival arcades, was an almost paradoxical consequence of the rational and logical principles of the new art.
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Church of St Nicholas in Brzeg, photo: Dawid Lasociński/Forum
The new style gradually expanded into other regions and other areas of construction – not only into sacral, but also into secular or defensive building. It appeared first in Lesser Poland, but the first Cistercian monasteries erected here – in Jędrzejów, Koprzywnica, Sulejów or Wąchock – represent rather a transitional period between Romanism and mature Gothic. Certainly, the new trend in architecture dominated construction in the Polish lands in the 14th century and was still present in its multiple variations at the end of the 16th century. Over the years, it has changed and evolved, depending on the region of its creation, its functional purpose, the expectations of investors or the place of origin of the builders (some inspirations were imported from the Baltic Sea basin, others from France or Germany). Researchers and historians of architecture divide the achievements of the Polish Gothic according to diverse typologies, but even the eye of an amateur can spot the differences between Silesian and Pomeranian Gothic and see the variety of formal and spatial solutions within this style.
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Primate's Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Gniezno, photo: Wojciech Wojcik/Forum
Gothic architecture developed along with cities – it was there that a vast majority of new buildings were erected. The Dominicans and Franciscans who settled in the Polish lands built their monasteries in cities, magnates and princes funded cathedrals and smaller temples here, merchants built tenement houses, and towns and castles were surrounded by defensive walls. Among the Gothic monuments preserved to this day, churches are the most numerous – because they less often underwent radical reconstructions (modernizations, if any, were usually limited to the interior furnishings), they were destroyed less frequently and more eagerly reconstructed – a ruined tenement house would usually be replaced with a new one, in the currently dominant style, while churches, being strongly inscribed in the city’s landscape and citizens’ consciousness, more often enjoyed restoration to the original shape and form. This is why some of the variations of the Gothic style are best observed when visiting medieval temples.
Gothic from the north, Gothic from the south
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St Mary's Basilica in Gdańsk, bird's eye view, photo: Robert Neumann / Forum
Architecture researchers emphasize considerable stylistic differences between the Gothic buildings erected in the south-west and in the north of Poland. Pomerania and Silesia – these were two regions that developed in an especially dynamic way in the 14th century, growing richer, and participating in international trade; the cities there were important centers on the map of Europe, and their buildings did not differ significantly from those in the urban hubs of Western Europe. However, due to their location, different traditions and influences or kinships with other corners of Europe came into play and were reflected in their character.
Although their basic shapes were built around the same time, in the 1440s, for similar needs and purposes (to serve as the main temple in a large and wealthy city), St Mary Magdalene’s cathedral in Wrocław and the co-cathedral basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Gdańsk are clearly different. The first one has the layout of a basilica (where the side aisles are lower than the main one) and is rich with architectural details, carved portals, epitaphs, reliefs and bas-reliefs embedded in the facades, made of light stone contrasting with the blocks of brick. St Mary's Church in Gdańsk has all the naves of the same height (hall systems were particularly popular in Pomerania), which makes its interior’s scale feel overwhelming; the much greater austerity of the huge brick façades devoid of decorations is complemented by a larger number of turrets. Although in both regions Gothic took monumental and rather austere forms, the one in Silesia was much richer in detail, all the more visible because it was made of stone, more easily available in a land full of quarries. In Pomerania, the character of the building was created by the brick itself.
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St Mary's Church in Krakow, photo: Andrzej Rubis / Forum
The builders of Gothic temples were, of course, far from the modernists’ worldview, but already in the 14th century the idea that in architecture sometimes it is worth giving up a few elements for a better effect had a certain popularity. Reductive Gothic, i.e. one consciously simplified, devoid of decorations, developed especially in Germany and in regions influenced by German culture. And it was the reductive, minimalistic style in which the cathedral in Frombork or the aforementioned St. Mary's Church in Gdańsk were built. But slightly more simplified, specially reduced forms can also be found in the cathedrals in Sandomierz and Gniezno (in the latter, the austerity of a clear structure was blurred by slightly later extensions). The trend towards reduction also includes a stone building quite unusual for the Polish Gothic, namely the collegiate basilica of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Wiślica.
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Church of St Roch and St John the Baptist in Brochów, photo: Forum
Although today Warsaw is the heart of Poland, in the Middle Ages, Mazovia was a much less developed region than today's Greater Poland, Pomerania and Lesser Poland. No wonder then that the appearance of Gothic in this region was not only delayed, but also took a very unusual form. Buildings in the style of 'Mazovian Gothic' come from the mid-sixteenth century, i.e. from the time when the Renaissance was already well established in other parts of Europe. Maybe that's why in these few Mazovian churches not all forms ‘agree,’ as it were, with the Gothic’s soaring quality?
Somewhat crude and squat, as if stocky churches in the Mazovian Gothic style had been made out of brick, supplemented with surfaces of light plaster, featured in the ornamented gables of the church facades. Mazovian Gothic can be seen in Brok near Małkinia, in Łęg Probostwo, Wizna, and Luszyna. One of the most interesting materializations of this provincial variety of Gothic is the church in Brochów in the Sochaczew district. It is actually a defensive building with a compact body and three high towers, two of which constitute a tall cylindrical flanking of a much lower façade. The building is unique, unlike any other Gothic buildings; also, as it happens, it played a certain part in Polish history: it was here that Fryderyk Chopin was baptized in 1910.
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Collegium Maius of the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, photo: Anna Kaczmarz/Dziennik Polski/Reporter/East News
But Gothic doesn’t only concern churches. And in the case of secular buildings, this style offered many different solutions, and the forms of buildings were erected also followed the gradually changing fashions. The Old Town Hall in Toruń, built at the end of the 14th century, has a completely different character than the one hundred years younger building with the same function in Wrocław. The first one has a monumental form with austere brick elevations, a high tower and four gates leading to the inner courtyard. The Gothic seat of the authorities of Wrocław in turn strikes one with a richly fragmented block full of details, ornaments and small elements that make it emanate finesse and lightness. Not many Gothic tenement houses have survived in Polish cities – private houses were rebuilt by their owners along with the changing trends to present themselves to the world as modern and progressive.
Many houses in Toruń's Old Town still have a Gothic character, including the most famous – the Copernicus House; the extremely decorative Protzen House in Stargard from the beginning of the 15th century has retained its original character, or several decades younger, built in the late Gothic style, the austere and scarcely decorative Długosz House in Sandomierz. The first students of the Kraków Academy, the first higher education institution in Poland, founded in 1364, also studied in a Gothic edifice. The expansion of Collegium Maius (the beginning of which was a corner tenement house donated to the university in 1400 by king Władysław Łokietek) was ‘aided’ by fires that destroyed some of the buildings in the 1560s and later in the 1590s. It is because of them that the university buildings were extended and modernized, thanks to which a new university quarter with a library and a garden was created in the late-Gothic style. Until the 18th century, Collegium Maius was the heart of Kraków's university.
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Pyrzyce Gate in Stargard Szczeciński photo: Wojciech Wojcik / Forum
Along with the increase of cities’ wealth, but also with the development of defense techniques, further fortifications were built in medieval Poland, which would ensure the safety of its cities. In the 13th and 14th centuries, earth ramparts were replaced with brick walls; as a result, entrance gates to the city, bridges and towers were built. Few of these architectural works have survived to this day – in many cities that grew rapidly in the 19th century, the defensive walls were removed to make room for the development of the cities. Among the settlements that have preserved Gothic fortifications, there are Paczków, Chełmno and Szydłów. Fragments of walls and gates, on the other hand, have survived to our times much more frequently.
Many of the latter can still be seen in Stargard today – they are all the more interesting because they are very distinct in appearance, shape, size and finish. While in the south of the country the walls and their elements were to be used primarily for defense, in Pomerania they were often given quite decorative forms. One of the most interesting monuments of ‘infrastructure’ in the Gothic style in today's Poland is the St. John’s bridge in Kłodzko. The four-span building was made of stone and decorated with sculptures; originally, its two ends were crowned with defensive gates, but these have not lasted to our times.
Highland castles & lowland castles
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Teutonic Castle in Malbork, photo: Cezary Wojtkowski /Forum
Castles constitute a separate category of Gothic constructions – they were built both in cities and outside them, and their forms were determined not only by the founder’s taste or by fashion, but above all by their landscape setting. This is why they are formally divided into upland and lowland, because some were erected on the hilltops, steep river banks or rocky mounds, in places that were difficult to reach, while also allowing for area observation. Many such fortified structures were erected during the reign of Casimir the Great, who recognized their great importance in the country’s defense system; a lot of such castles, very picturesquely situated among rocky peaks, can be found in the mountainous areas of southern Poland.
Highland castles, also due to the locations that made it difficult to carry out construction works, are rarely characterized by ornamental forms. Highland castles of the past are those that today can be admired as ruins: in Chęciny, Kazimierz Dolny, Ogrodzieniec, Olsztyn in the Silesian Voivodeship, or in Bolków, among others. The situation is different with the castles that the Teutonic Order built for its own needs. Their strongholds were usually lowland castles. Although occasionally located right on the river bank, their defensive characteristics resulted from the specifically shaped architecture, the arrangement of walls and towers, and not from the terrain they were set in. This all applies to the most famous and largest of them – in Malbork.
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Niedzica Castle, photo: Dariusz Zarod/East News
A lot of Gothic monuments in the Polish lands have been preserved to this day. They may not be as impressive as German castles, nor do they have the finesse of French cathedrals, but they represent their time well and offer a surprising richness of forms.
Translated from Polish by Michał Pelczar
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