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Stary Kościół Nawiedzenia Najświętszej Maryi Panny Sucha Beskidzka

Old Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Sucha Beskidzka

Niewielki murowany kościół w kolorze piaskowym. Na dachu sygnaturka. Pod kościołem stoją ludzie.

Kościelna 3, 34-200 Sucha Beskidzka Tourist region: Beskid Mały i Makowski

tel. +48 786957688
The Gothic church, built in the early 17th century, is the most valuable building of the church and monastery complex. Next to it is a new larger church built at the turn of the 19th and 20th century.

The temple was founded in 1613–1614 by Piotr Komorowski, owner of the castle in Sucha Beskidzka. Between 1614 and 1624, its care was looked after by the Bernardine Fathers from Kalwaria Zebrzydowska; in 1624, Piotr Komorowski added a late Renaissance monastery connected to the church by an arcaded corridor. The monastery and parish were taken over by the Canons Regular of Corpus Christi, who were brought here from Kraków. In 1782, the Austrian authorities abolished the order and the monks left the Sucha Beskidzka parish. When the old church became too small for the growing number of parishioners, a new neo-Gothic-neo-Romanesque church, designed by Teodor Talowski, was built in 1895–1907, financed by the Branicki counts and the Sucha Beskidzka railway workers. The temple was consecrated in 1956. During World War II, the old church was plundered, the bells were taken away and the stained-glass windows, roof and windows were destroyed.

It’s a stone, late-Gothic temple, with buttresses, a single-nave with a small presbytery closed with a straight wall, a side chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows from the mid-17th century and numerous late-Renaissance architectural and decorative elements. It’s a towerless church with a small, tin-roofed Baroque turret. The buttress on the west side bears the coat-of-arms cartouche of the founder Piotr Komorowski with Renaissance ornamentation. The church, mainly the roof and side altars, has been rebuilt several times. A Baroque painting with a scene of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been preserved inside on the chancel vault. Beneath the chancel is the Komorowski burial crypt, where Piotr Komorowski with his second wife Marianna, née Bnińska, and Brother Mikołaj Komorowski rest. The Rococo music choir is supported by four Ionic columns. The main altar and five side altars also represent the Rococo style. Numerous epitaphs can be seen on the walls.

An arcade passage connects the church with the late Renaissance monastery, which today houses the presbytery. Two unique Renaissance majolica panels with a scene of the Crucifixion and the founder’s coat of arms have been preserved on its façade. Historically, the temple was fronted by a wide walled courtyard, and had been partly occupied by a cemetery that was in active use until 1836. Three of the seven chapels standing in the courtyard have survived, including one which was rebuilt in 1818 as a bell tower and the tomb of the Wielkopolski family.


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