St. Andrew’s Church in Lipnica Murowana
Lipnica Murowana 39, 32-724 Lipnica Murowana
Tourist region: Pogórza
tel. +48 604956057 (przewodnik)
tel. +48 695150870
The parish in Lipnica Murowana was established in 1144. In 1363, King Casimir the Great founded a brick church on the site of the wooden temple. In 1483, the village mayor Łukasz Waldorf founded the altar of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The church burned down in the 1500s and 1740s and several times in the 19th century. After being destroyed during the Swedish invasion in 1655, it was renovated, rebuilt in 1720 and 1754, and rebuilt again after the fire of 1820. The Gothic portals were partially uncovered in 1973 and plastered in 1976. The last revitalisation of the polychrome and furnishings was between 2009 and 2011.
The church was built on a cruciform plan. It is a sandstone masonry, plastered, single-nave church with a narrower chancel closed on two sides, chapels in the side arms and a massive clock tower on a square plan, more than 30 metres high, supported by corner buttresses. A high, gabled roof crowns it with a quadrilateral turret signature covered with tiles. The façade, with a black wrought-iron gate, is built of irregular sandstone blocks.
The walls and ceiling are decorated with figural and ornamental polychromes by Aleksander Miklasiński in 1863. The neo-Baroque high altar was made in 1887 by Ludwik Sikorski. The Rococo altarpiece in the chapel dates from 1773. The side altars and those in the chapels from the late 19th century are the work of Władysław Łuczkiewicz and Ludwik Sikorski. The oldest and most valuable piece of equipment is the Gothic wooden statue of Our Lady and Child from 1370, called the Beautiful Madonna of Lipnice, a gift from King Casimir the Great. The carvings of Christ on the rainbow from the 17th century and in the vestry from the 18th century are of particular interest. The pulpit dates from 1889, and the stone baptismal fonts from the 14th and 15th centuries. Saint Simon was baptised in the older one in 1435. The shrine houses the relics of Saint John Paul II.
In the tower hangs the bell Maryja, called the ‘Presidential Bell’ in memory of its founder, President Lech Kaczyński, cast in 2009. In front of the church are ceramic statues of the Lipnica saints Szymon and Ursula Ledóchowska and Blessed Teresa Ledóchowska, works by students of the arts secondary school in Wiśnicz from the early 21st century.
The parish. of St Andrew the Apostle in Lipnica Murowana is also the sanctuary of St Simon.