Cathedral Basilica of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Tarnów: A Gothic Cathedral and Renaissance Mausoleum
Site at a Glance
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- Poland
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Kingdom of Poland, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page25 sections
History
The Cathedral Basilica of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a historic church in Tarnów, Poland, whose origins lie in the first parish church founded soon after the city received its charter in 1330. Built of brick with a wooden ceiling on the town’s highest point within the medieval walls, it occupied the area of the present nave. Spycimir Leliwita founded the church, while patronage passed to his descendants, the Tarnowski family. The building developed through medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, nineteenth-century Neo-Gothic, and modern phases into the cathedral and minor basilica that stands today.
Parish and collegiate foundation
The Tarnów parish was mentioned in a letter that King Casimir III sent to the pope on 12 January 1346. Its first recorded parish priest was Mikołaj, a Czech who had formerly belonged to the Order of the Holy Sepulchre at Miechów. The parish had been separated from the Benedictine parish of St Martin and entered the papal penny registers from 1352.
The first enlargement took place in the second half of the fourteenth century. Spytek of Tarnów founded the Chapel of the Holy Cross, also known as the Chapel of Corpus Christi, and provided it with an altar. On 28 October 1392, the church hosted the consecration of the Franciscan Jakub Strepa as the first bishop of Halicz. Tarnów was chosen for the ceremony because Jan of Tarnów held the office of Ruthenian starost.
On 17 April 1400, Bishop Piotr Wysz of Kraków raised the parish church to collegiate status at Jan of Tarnów’s request. A collegiate church was served by an organized chapter of clergy, led by a provost and supported by canons and other members. The new chapter consisted of three prelates and two canons, and the provost’s jurisdiction extended over seven parishes. Pope Martin V confirmed the foundation in 1418. It was the first aristocratic collegiate foundation in the Kraków diocese.
The new status encouraged a gradual enlargement of the complex. The chancel, canonical sacristy, western tower, and several chapels were constructed or expanded, while canonical houses later rose beside the medieval city wall behind the church. In 1415, Jan Tarnowski and his brother Spytek established the Chapel of the Sending of the Apostles over their father’s tomb. Its altar was endowed for the salvation of their father and ancestors, and the foundation also commemorated the brothers’ participation in the Battle of Grunwald. The canon responsible for the chapel received the village of Łukowa.
Fires and the Tarnowski mausoleum
Fires in 1483 and 1494 caused severe damage. The fire of 1483 destroyed the wooden ceilings, the upper part of the tower, and the chancel. Rebuilding enlarged the chancel and closed it with a straight wall, raised the walls, introduced a net vault, and replaced the tower with a wholly masonry structure. Canonical stalls were added, and the Chapel of St Anne, the treasury, the Chapel of Our Lady of the Scapular, and the richly decorated southern portal were added or completed by the early sixteenth century.
An inventory from 1559 listed 13 altars maintained by religious and guild confraternities. One altar had been donated in 1528 by King John Zápolya of Hungary in gratitude for the hospitality he had received in Tarnów.
During the first half of the sixteenth century, Hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski, a senior military commander in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, commissioned monuments to several members of his family. The collegiate church thereby became a dynastic mausoleum. The monuments commemorated his mother Barbara of Rożnowo, his first wife Barbara of the Tęczyński family, his father Jan Amor Tarnowski, and his half-brother, also named Jan Amor.
After the hetman’s death in 1561, Giovanni Maria Padovano rearranged several monuments and moved them into side chapels to create space for the monument to Jan Tarnowski. Produced between 1561 and 1574 under Padovano’s direction, the monument originally commemorated Jan Tarnowski and his son Jan Krzysztof. After Jan Krzysztof died in 1567, Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski commissioned its conversion into a two-level memorial for father and son. A lower section was later added for Zofia Ostrogska, who died in 1570. Rising 13.8 metres, it became the tallest Renaissance tomb monument in Poland.
The first monument in the church that did not belong to the Tarnowski family commemorated Provost Marcin Łyczka, who died in 1578 and founded the masonry parish-school building. Its authorship is attributed to Wojciech Kuszczyc, who also made the oldest surviving epitaph in the church. From 1612, Jan Pfister’s workshop produced the monument to Prince Janusz Ostrogski and his wife Zuzanna of the Seredy family. Made in Brzeżany, it was transported to Tarnów and installed after 1620 opposite the Tarnowski monument.
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century changes
A fire on 15 April 1617 destroyed the roof over the chancel, melted two bells, brought down two others, and destroyed church records and privileges. Reconstruction added a treasury and chapter house on the north side of the chancel. A new high altar was installed in 1644.
Another fire damaged the city and collegiate church in 1663. The altars and tomb monuments survived, and rebuilding began in 1667, continuing for several years through donations from the chapter and the faithful. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the collegiate church received numerous relics from Rome, including the complete body of Blessed Felicissimus, a martyr traditionally dated to 258. Local devotion associated the relics with the rapid end of the plague in 1705. They were placed in the Chapel of the Holy Relics on 8 September 1712, and its altar was completed in 1733.
In the early eighteenth century, the collegiate clergy numbered 34 priests organized into four colleges: prelates and canons, vicars, mansionaries, and psalters. Mansionaries celebrated specified masses and services, while psalters were especially responsible for singing or reciting the Psalms in the liturgy. Following Bishop Konstanty Szaniawski’s visitation in 1725, a reform decree addressed neglected services, clerical absence, church maintenance, and the restoration of the damaged parish school.
After the city fire of 1735, the church received fire-resistant roofing, completed in 1740. Leaks in the new roof led to the chancel being covered with copper sheet in 1757, the year in which new organs were also installed. About a decade later, a new floor was laid using proceeds from the sale of treasury valuables, and the tomb monuments were restored.
Cathedral status and nineteenth-century rebuilding
An imperial decree of 20 September 1783 created the Diocese of Tarnów from territory incorporated into Galicia after the First Partition of Poland. The partition was the 1772 annexation of part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The decree designated the collegiate church as the diocese’s cathedral. Austrian regulations closed the cemetery beside the church in 1784. In 1785, the government confiscated nearly all of the collegiate treasury, dissolved the chapter in its former form, transferred its endowments to the Religious Fund, and confiscated the chapter buildings. The high altar also burned that year.
Pope Pius VI canonically established the Diocese of Tarnów on 13 March 1786, placed it within the Lviv ecclesiastical province, and confirmed the former collegiate church as its cathedral. Bishop Florian Amand Janowski made his solemn entrance on 24 September 1786 before thousands of worshippers.
In 1808, after Kraków came under Austrian control, the Austrian government transferred the bishopric to Tyniec. The former cathedral became a parish church, first in the Diocese of Przemyśl and, from 1822, in the Diocese of Tyniec. A papal bull restored the Diocese of Tarnów on 23 April 1826, and the church again became its cathedral.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Chapels of Our Lady of the Scapular and the Holy Cross were combined as the Chapel of St Valentine and later enlarged and renamed the Chapel of St Benedict. The unsafe upper part of the tower was dismantled to roof level in 1810. In 1821, the tower was slightly raised and given a domed roof.
Bishop Grzegorz Tomasz Ziegler laid the foundation stone for a major rebuilding on 28 April 1827. After his departure, General Vicar Jan Chrzciciel Fukier and parish priest Stanisław Kostka Zabierzewski directed the work, which continued until 1832. The chancel was extended, a new treasury was built, the music gallery was enlarged, and earlier chapels and service spaces were joined to form side aisles. The exterior was coated with lime mortar. The rebuilding gave the church a basilican arrangement, with a higher central nave and lower side aisles, but it substantially obscured the medieval Gothic character.
Further work directed by parish priest Michał Król took place between 1850 and 1853. A second canonical sacristy was added, a marble floor from the ruined Lubomirski palace at Dąbrowa Tarnowska was installed, interior plaster and some vaulting were renewed, and new painted decoration was made to a design by Zygmunt Grüner. Three side altars were installed or commissioned, and damaged tomb monuments were repaired.
Neo-Gothic restoration and twentieth-century preservation
Canon Stanisław Walczyński began collecting funds to rebuild the tower in 1884. Bishop Ignacy Łobos made restoration a priority in 1886, and Julian Zachariewicz of Lviv designed a Neo-Gothic reconstruction. Two committees were established in 1890, and Franciszek Hackbeil the Elder’s building firm carried out the work between 1890 and 1899.
The tower was rebuilt to a height of 72 metres, the chancel and threatened walls were reconstructed, two northern vestibules were added, much of the exterior plaster was removed, and new brick facing was applied. The roofs were covered with copper. The tower received the bell Ignacy Józef, two smaller bells, and a four-faced clock. In 1899, a gilded crown was placed on its summit to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Emperor Francis Joseph I’s reign.
The restoration also introduced Neo-Gothic interior furnishings, including a stone music gallery, tabernacle, pulpit, canonical stalls, Stations of the Cross, and the altar of the Blessed Sacrament. The Tarnowski and Ostrogski monuments were restored, while Barbara of Rożnowo’s monument was moved into the chancel. Earlier painted decoration was removed or painted over. The main restoration was completed before 1900, the five-hundredth anniversary of the collegiate foundation, for which Franciszek Herzig published a monograph. Work in 1904 and 1905 added a new floor, completed the exterior plinth, and installed the western main portal.
In 1910, a tomb monument to Prince Eustachy Sanguszko was installed in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, and a plaque commemorating the five-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald was placed on the former Chapel of the Sending of the Apostles. A new polychrome scheme begun in 1913 drew serious objections from Vienna’s Central Commission for the Preservation of Monuments. Lightning damaged almost half of the eastern clock face in 1914, while the church avoided major wartime damage during the First World War.
As German occupation continued and the Second World War front approached, temporary walls and sandbags were placed around the monuments in 1944. A bomb explosion on 10 January 1945 destroyed the stained-glass ensemble but did not otherwise destroy the church.
Renovation under parish priest Jan Bochenek continued from 1957 to 1960. A granite floor with heating beneath it, new lighting, cleaned and repaired tomb monuments, reconstructed surrounding frescoes, restored surviving sixteenth-century polychromy, renewed stained glass, and new benches based on earlier Rococo examples formed part of the work. Józef E. Dutkiewicz, Adam Marczyński, and Wacław Taranczewski executed a new interior polychrome scheme. Proposed replacement of the nineteenth-century side altars and alteration of the side-aisle arches were abandoned.
New stained glass designed by Józef Furdyna and made in Anna and Ireneusz Zarzycki’s workshop was installed in the south aisle in 1969 and 1970. In 1970, copper-sheet doors were installed beneath the tower to mark the millennium of Christianity in Poland. Pope Paul VI granted the church the title and dignity of a minor basilica through the apostolic letter Cum beatissima on 14 June 1972. A minor basilica is a papally granted honor recognizing a church’s particular religious or historical importance without making it the seat of a bishop.
Major interior restoration directed by parish priest Kazimierz Kos took place from 1981 to 1986 on the initiative of Bishop Jerzy Ablewicz and architect Edward Dutkiewicz. The monuments were restored, polychromy in the nave and chancel was whitened, the chancel floor was raised, and a new main altar was installed farther toward the nave. The Pietà, an image of the Virgin Mary mourning over the dead Christ, was moved from the southern vestibule to a new bronze altar in the south aisle. Three sets of symbolic bronze doors were installed between 1983 and 1985.
A copy of the Częstochowa icon visited the basilica from 1 to 8 September 1982 during nationwide commemorations of the six-hundredth anniversary of the Jasna Góra monastery. It was later represented by a permanent copy by Kazimierz Rydel in one of the side altars. Pope John Paul II visited the restored cathedral on 10 June 1987 and celebrated Eucharistic Vespers in Cathedral Square. A 1.5-metre-high monstrance designed by Czesław Dźwigaj and funded by the Tarnów diocesan clergy was used during the ceremony.
In 2000, Marek Benewiat’s bronze Annunciation sculpture was placed in the southern vestibule, where the Pietà’s former altar had stood. Organ restoration was also completed, including alteration of the organ case and installation of a musical angel sculpture. In 2002, a carved panel bearing the symbols of the four Evangelists and papal and episcopal coats of arms was installed on the inner side of the doors beneath the gallery.
Bishop Wiktor Skworc formally established the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Sorrows in the cathedral by decree of 2 February 2006, confirming the cult of the seventeenth-century Tarnów Pietà. Between 2005 and 2007, the copper roof over the main nave was renewed, the walls were cleaned and damaged sections repaired, and the gilding of the finial ball and tower crown was renewed.
Archaeological and geophysical investigations in 2025 identified human remains, devotional objects, and coins in the burgher crypt, dating from the period of Queen Anna Jagiellon to the interwar period. Ground-penetrating radar indicated previously undocumented underground spaces, including a crypt between the Tarnowski and Ostrogski crypts and another beneath the burgher crypt. At least 13 crypts have been indicated, although the contents of the previously unrecorded spaces remain uncertain. The two surviving tin sarcophagi of Janusz Ostrogski and his third wife, Teofila of the Tarło family, were transferred for conservation in 2025. The first stage was completed in December 2025, with their return planned after restoration.
Remains
The cathedral stands in Tarnów’s Old Town, in the middle of the northern part of Cathedral Square near the northwestern corner of the Market Square. Dense urban buildings adjoin it on three sides, while the historic buildings of the Diocesan Museum stand to the west beside the medieval city wall. The church is an oriented, three-nave brick basilica with stone architectural details. Its main nave rises above the side aisles and carries a gabled roof, while the aisles have lean-to roofs. The long, narrower chancel ends in a three-sided apse, and the Chapel of the Sacred Heart has a domed roof with a lantern. Copper sheet covers all the roofs.
Exterior and entrances
Western tower
The square western tower has five storeys and rises 72 metres. Its Neo-Gothic upper structure ends in a pyramidal helmet roof, a slender spire, and a gilded crown dating from 1899. A belfry is built into the tower. The bells are identified as Władysław, Mary, Ignacy, and Józef; the cathedral is also described as having three bells and two clock gongs, with only the smallest bell used daily.
South vestibule
The south vestibule is a late Gothic structure from the sixteenth century with a brick-ribbed net vault. Its bronze double doors, made in 1985 to designs by Czesław Dźwigaj, depict the joyful and sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary. Sixteenth-century iron-clad doors remain fixed to their inner side.
The entrance from the vestibule to the nave has a richly carved Gothic-Renaissance portal made from Pińczów limestone at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Its ornamental and figural sculpture includes the Misericordia Domini motif. A seventeenth-century holy-water stoup of black Dębnik limestone stands beside the entrance.
North vestibule and tower entrance
The northern vestibule was built during the Neo-Gothic reconstruction in 1897 and 1898. Its crystal vault, pointed-arch portal, and fine-grained sandstone entrance are accompanied by bronze doors from 1983 designed by Czesław Dźwigaj. Reliefs on the doors depict the Passion of Christ, while figures of St Wojciech, St Maximilian Kolbe, and Polish martyrs decorate the doors and jambs. Józef Dutkiewicz made the vestibule’s sgraffito decoration in 1958. Sgraffito is produced by cutting through a surface layer to reveal a contrasting layer beneath it.
The vestibule beneath the tower has a cross vault with brick ribs and a Neo-Gothic sandstone portal designed by Julian Zachariewicz. Its copper-sheet doors, designed by Bogdana and Anatol Drwal and installed in 1970, carry bronze figures of St Stanislaus and Blessed Kinga and commemorate the millennium of Christianity in Poland. A late Gothic portal leading to the main nave, bearing the Leliwa coat of arms, dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Chancel and central nave
Chancel
The chancel incorporates a fifteenth-century section enlarged in the nineteenth century. It is narrower than the nave, closes with a three-sided apse, and contains six near-life-size sandstone figures made by Zygmunt Langman in 1892. They represent St Casimir, St Kinga, St Adalbert, St Stanislaus of Szczepanów, Blessed Simon of Lipnica, and St John Cantius. Stained glass made around the turn of the twentieth century in Fritz Jele’s workshop in Innsbruck fills the windows. The later section contains canonical stalls made in Kazimierz Wakulski’s workshop at the end of the nineteenth century.
Tomb monuments
Four principal tomb monuments stand in the chancel. The Tarnowski monument, made between 1561 and 1573 under Giovanni Maria Padovano, is a two-level structure resembling the facade of a Greek temple. It is approximately 13 metres high and 6.60 metres wide. White sandstone forms its architectural framework, while red marble is used for columns, tablets, and figures. Alabaster reliefs show the hetman’s military victories at Obertyn, Starodub, and Chocim in 1538.
The monument to Zofia Tarnowska, Duchess Ostrogska, was made soon after her death in 1570 from Italian Verona marble and is structurally connected with the Tarnowski monument. The Ostrogski monument, made in Jan Pfister’s workshop between 1612 and 1620, measures 12.9 metres high and 7.9 metres wide. Red marble contrasts with alabaster in a composition that combines Renaissance architecture with Mannerist decoration.
Barbara of Rożnowo’s monument was made several years after her death in 1517 by an unknown artist. It is a Gothic-Renaissance work in fine-grained white sandstone from Szydłów. The south aisle contains the hanging monument to Barbara of the Tęczyński family, Jan Tarnowski’s first wife. Made around 1555 in Padovano’s workshop from sandstone and red marble, it shows her reclining beneath a niche decorated with medallions of the Madonna and Child and the Leliwa and Topór coats of arms.
Nave vault and furnishings
The three-bay main nave has a net vault dating from 1494 and supplemented in 1890. Its pointed chancel arch and inter-nave arcades belong to the Gothic vocabulary of the interior. Earlier polychromy survives in the blind arcades above the windows. Polychromy means painted architectural or sculptural decoration.
Two Neo-Baroque side altars from the middle of the nineteenth century stand near the chancel arch. One contains a Crucifixion painting and the other a copy of the Częstochowa Madonna by Kazimierz Rydel. Opposite the pulpit is a third side altar with Ksawery Marynowski’s 1848 painting of St Casimir. All three altars came from the workshop of Kajetan Damasiewicz of Nowy Sącz. A seventeenth-century black-marble Baroque baptismal font stands beside the altar of the Częstochowa Madonna.
The Neo-Gothic wooden pulpit, made in Kazimierz Wakulski’s Kraków workshop in 1894, consists of a preaching platform and canopy. Five reliefs of Christ and the four Evangelists decorate its outer panels. The western music gallery rests on three pointed arches and incorporates stone figures of St Cecilia and Pope Gregory the Great by Zygmunt Langman. Two richly carved late Gothic canonical stalls with vegetal and geometric tracery motifs stand beneath the gallery.
South aisle and chapels
The south aisle was formed in the nineteenth century by joining earlier spaces. From east to west, it incorporates the Chapel of St Benedict, the former Chapel of Our Lady of the Scapular, the Chapel of the Holy Cross, the former southern vestibule or women’s gallery, and the Chapel of the Sending of the Apostles.
Chapel of St Benedict and Chapel of Our Lady of the Scapular
The Chapel of St Benedict was built in Neo-Gothic form in 1827 as an extension of an earlier chapel and has polychromy by Adam Marczyński. The Chapel of Our Lady of the Scapular was built in 1514 in the Gothic style. Its ribbed cross vault rests on corbels shaped as heads, and fragments of Gothic-Renaissance polychromy from 1514 to 1526 depict Marian and Passion scenes.
Chapel of the Holy Cross and former southern vestibule
The Chapel of the Holy Cross dates from the last quarter of the fourteenth century. Its brick vault is an unusual seven-section Piast vault, a distinctive ribbed form associated with medieval Polish architecture, whose ribs are supported at five points. The former southern vestibule is an early fifteenth-century Gothic structure with a star vault and Maiestas Domini polychromy.
Chapel of the Sending of the Apostles
Built in 1415, the Chapel of the Sending of the Apostles has a Gothic star vault supported by wall shafts. Its keystone bears a Sternberg coat of arms, and its painted decoration depicts scenes from the Battle of Grunwald.
South-aisle monuments and altars
The Neo-Renaissance altar of the Blessed Sacrament was made around 1900 from Carrara marble to a design by Tadeusz Błotnicki. Its central relief adapts Christ’s figure from Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, and the altar contains the basilica’s tabernacle, the secure receptacle for consecrated Eucharistic elements.
The bronze altar of Our Lady of Sorrows was designed by Czesław Dźwigaj and made by Stefan Kowalówka in 1987. It contains the seventeenth-century Baroque Tarnów Pietà, while reliefs of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary decorate its front. The aisle also contains the late Renaissance wall monument to Provost Marcin Łyczka, whose reclining figure appears in a niche above a high plinth of sandstone and red marble. A Neo-Classical white-marble monument to Eustachy Stanisław Sanguszko, made by Antoni Madeyski, shows the deceased reclining on a tomb chest.
A wooden crucifix more than four metres high and dating from the eighteenth century stands in the south aisle. Parts of the late-nineteenth-century Stations of the Cross and numerous epitaphs are also preserved there. Jan Pfister’s Mannerist epitaph of Stanisław and Katarzyna Zięba, dated 1622, includes a relief background with the oldest surviving view of Tarnów. Józef Edward Dutkiewicz painted most of the aisle’s polychromy in 1957 and 1958.
North aisle and Chapel of the Sacred Heart
The north aisle was likewise formed in the nineteenth century from earlier spaces, including the former Chapel of the Holy Relics, the former sacristy, and the Chapel of St Anne. The Chapel of the Holy Relics was built above the treasury in 1712 with a Baroque dome and lantern and is now the Chapel of the Sacred Heart. The former sacristy, added in the early fifteenth century, has a cross vault. The Chapel of St Anne, built before 1514, has a star vault.
Altar of the Sacred Heart
The north aisle contains the mid-nineteenth-century Classical altar of the Sacred Heart, with a 1916 painting signed by Wiesław Zarzycki. Reworked in 1982, it incorporates a Neo-Gothic predella and an 1892 tabernacle designed by Julian Zachariewicz and transferred from the former high altar. A silver Rococo antependium from the second half of the eighteenth century depicts the apostles Peter and Paul. An antependium is a decorated frontal covering the front of an altar.
North-aisle monuments and decoration
The late Renaissance monument to Provost Kasper Branicki, who died in 1602, has a marble relief figure in a rectangular niche and allegorical figures of Faith and Hope. The Renaissance monument known as the “Three Jans” was made after 1536 from Pińczów limestone and rearranged by Padovano in 1561. It commemorates Jan Amor Tarnowski, his half-brother Jan Amor, and his son Jan Aleksander.
The aisle also contains seventeenth-century and later epitaphs, parts of the late-nineteenth-century Stations of the Cross, and polychromy by Józef Edward Dutkiewicz. Wacław Taranczewski painted the dome of the Chapel of the Sacred Heart.
Organ, exterior sculpture, and square monuments
The cathedral organ was made by Rieger Orgelbau of Krnov. According to the company catalogue, it was built in 1906 as opus 1347. The Biernacki organ-building firm rebuilt and enlarged it in 1964 and 1965, with Tadeusz Rajkowski completing the work after the Biernacki branch undertaking the project went bankrupt. The organ case was altered during restoration completed in 2000, when a musical angel sculpture was also installed.
A relief of the Crucified Christ, designed by Antoni Madeyski and installed in 1899, decorates the exterior wall beside the apse. The exterior of the south aisle also bears an image of the crucified Christ funded by Janusz Rypuszyński. Cathedral Square contains a stone column carrying a statue of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founded by Bishop Józef Pukalski in 1884, and a bronze monument to Pope John Paul II by Bronisław Chromy, unveiled on 29 June 1981. Marek Benewiat’s bronze Annunciation sculpture occupies the former location of the Pietà’s altar in the southern vestibule.
Crypts and burials
Eight masonry burial crypts with barrel vaults are documented beneath the cathedral. Those beneath the chancel are associated with the Tarnowski and Ostrogski families and with Marcin Łyczka. The Ostrogski crypt preserves two tin sarcophagi. The Tarnowski crypt yielded ashes, a gold chain with a medal bearing the initials of King Sigismund II Augustus, and two gilded silver epitaph tablets dedicated to Hetman Jan Tarnowski and his son Jan Krzysztof.
The largest crypt lies beneath the main nave and measures nearly 10 metres in length and more than four metres in width. It served for wealthy or particularly distinguished townspeople. Human bones, devotional objects, and coins recovered during the 2025 investigations date from the period of Queen Anna Jagiellon to the interwar period.
Three crypts lie beneath the south aisle, two beneath the Chapel of the Sending of the Apostles and one beneath the Chapel of the Holy Cross. A clergy crypt beneath the Chapel of St Anne, now called the bishops’ crypt, contains large stone sarcophagi and the burials of diocesan clergy and bishops, including Andrzej Tarło, Józef Grzegorz Wojtarowicz, Jerzy Ablewicz, Franciszek Lisowski, and Jan Stepa. Józef Furdyna made its sgraffito decoration in 1987.
