St. John’s Archcathedral: Warsaw’s Archdiocesan Cathedral and National Pantheon
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Poland
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russian
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page18 sections
History
St. John’s Archcathedral is a Catholic church dedicated to John the Baptist in Warsaw, Poland. The Brick Gothic church, whose present medieval construction is dated to 1390, stands in Warsaw’s Old Town and serves as the principal church of the Archdiocese of Warsaw. It is one of three major cathedrals in the city and the only one to hold the title of archcathedral, a cathedral serving as the main church of an archdiocese under an archbishop.
From ducal chapel to parish church
The site began as the castle chapel of the Dukes of Masovia, the rulers of a historical region and medieval duchy in central Poland. Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it became a parish church. Through the efforts of Duke Janusz I of Masovia, it was transformed into a three-nave basilica. The church later served as a coronation and burial place for numerous Dukes of Masovia, including Stanisław I and Janusz III, the last duke of Masovia.
A 60-metre tower was added to the Gothic church during the sixteenth century, but it collapsed in a severe storm in 1602. The building was reconstructed in the seventeenth century. During the reign of King Władysław IV Vasa, its facade was remodelled in the Baroque style by the architect Jan Wloch.
Royal connections and religious development
In the late sixteenth century, Queen Anna Jagiellon commissioned an elevated passage 80 metres long to connect the church with the Royal Castle. It was extended in the 1620s after Michał Piekarski’s failed attempt to assassinate King Sigismund III in front of the cathedral in 1620. The church also gained an Armenian Catholic chapel in the eighteenth century after Armenians fled Podolia during and after the Polish-Ottoman War of 1672 to 1676.
The cathedral became the seat of the Diocese of Warsaw in 1798 and of the Archdiocese of Warsaw after 1818. It was also connected with the political history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Great Sejm, the parliament that met from 1788 to 1792, adopted the Constitution of 3 May 1791 at the Royal Castle. King Stanisław August Poniatowski then repeated his constitutional oath before the cathedral altar, while the marshals of the Great Sejm were carried into the cathedral by enthusiastic parliamentary deputies.
Nineteenth-century remodelling
Between 1836 and 1840, architect Adam Idzkowski renovated the church and gave it a Gothic Revival appearance. Gothic Revival was a nineteenth-century movement that revived medieval Gothic forms and motifs. This version of the building remained in place until the Second World War.
The cathedral’s royal and civic associations continued through its memorials and burials. Its crypts contain the remains of monarchs, state officials, politicians, military figures, bishops, writers, and artists. They include Isabella of the Vasa dynasty, daughter of King Władysław IV Vasa; Adam Kazanowski, court grand chamberlain; Marcello Bacciarelli, court painter; King Stanisław II August Poniatowski; writer Henryk Sienkiewicz; President Gabriel Narutowicz; Presidents Ignacy Mościcki and Stanisław Wojciechowski; Prime Minister, pianist, and composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski; General Kazimierz Sosnkowski; and Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński.
War, destruction, and reconstruction
During the Warsaw Uprising, the armed revolt by the Polish underground against German occupation from August to October 1944, the cathedral became a battlefield between Polish insurgents and the advancing German army. A German tank carrying explosives was brought into the building, and its explosion destroyed a large part of the church. After the uprising collapsed, German destruction units drilled holes in the walls and detonated more explosives. About 90 percent of the walls were destroyed. Bombing on 17 August eliminated the early Baroque interior decoration and the main-altar painting by Palma il Giovane, while the remaining structure was blown up in November.
The cathedral was rebuilt between 1947 and 1952 through collective Polish efforts and donations from Warsaw residents. Rather than reproducing the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival building, the reconstruction aimed to restore a medieval Gothic appearance. Its exterior was based on the presumed medieval form shown in early seventeenth-century images by Frans Hogenberg and Abraham Boot. Original medieval bricks were reused in the facades and gable. The rebuilding formed part of Warsaw’s wider post-war recovery after the planned German destruction of the city and sought to restore the cathedral’s historical Polish architectural character.
St. John’s functions as one of Poland’s national pantheons. The cathedral and Warsaw’s historic centre were inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980. The church also lies within the nationally designated Historic Monument of Poland covering Warsaw’s historic city centre, the Royal Route, and Wilanów, designated in 1994.
Remains
Exterior and plan
St. John’s Archcathedral is a reconstructed Brick Gothic building on Świętojańska Street, adjacent to the Jesuit Church. Its exterior follows a presumed medieval Gothic design and incorporates original medieval brick in the facades and gable. The church has three naves, with the two aisles rising to the same height as the main nave. A belfry stands on the right when the building is viewed from the front, and a passage to Dziekania Street runs beneath it.
The main entrance is closed by a wrought-bronze door made by the metalworker Adam Jablonski. Its tympanum contains engraved reliefs of the Crucified Christ and the cathedral’s coats of arms. The upper section shows the Polish eagle and the Warsaw mermaid, while the third section presents episodes from the life of John the Baptist, including the Baptism of Christ and the Beheading of John. Four additional panels portray important events in the cathedral’s history.
Interior furnishings
Choir stalls and pulpit
The choir stalls made between 1963 and 1972 faithfully copy the seventeenth-century Baroque stalls destroyed during the war. King John III Sobieski donated the earlier stalls in memory of his victory at the Battle of Vienna. Full-length wooden sculptures of the Apostles decorate the north side, while other saints appear on the south side. The cathedral also contains a pulpit designed by Józef Trenarowski in 1959, along with chapels, tombs, gravestones, and epitaphs.
Stained glass
Colourful stained-glass windows designed by Wacław Taranczewski depict the life of John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, Saint Stanisław, and other Polish saints.
Baryczka Chapel
The Baryczka Chapel stands at the end of the left aisle. Its principal furnishing is a late Gothic wooden crucifix representing the dead Christ. The merchant and Warsaw city councillor Jerzy Baryczka brought the crucifix from Nuremberg in 1539 after saving it during the religious upheavals of the Reformation. It has been venerated in Warsaw for generations. In 1683, John III Sobieski placed a captured Turkish banner at its feet after the relief of Vienna. Polish resistance fighters rescued the crucifix from the cathedral fire in 1944.
Chapel of Whipped Christ
The Chapel of Whipped Christ is the oldest part of the cathedral and dates from the fifteenth century. Its Baroque interior has marble decoration and an altar from the first half of the seventeenth century, approximately 1630.
Baptistery
The Baptistery originated in the sixteenth century and contains a historic black-marble baptismal font dated 1631. It also holds The Baptism of Christ, a painting made in the late seventeenth century by Michael Willmann. The baptistery was demolished during the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival renovation before its furnishings were incorporated into the reconstructed cathedral.
Chapels of John the Baptist and Saint Stanisław
The Chapel of John the Baptist survives in its present architectural form from the late 1950s. The fifteenth-century Saint Stanisław Chapel was destroyed during the Second World War. On its former site stands the Chapel-Mausoleum of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, built in 1986 and 1987 to designs by Bolesław Szmidt. Wyszyński served as Archbishop of Warsaw and Primate of Poland.
Chapel of the Immaculate Conception
The reconstructed Chapel of the Immaculate Conception contains a Rococo altar and a seventeenth-century effigy of the Virgin Mary from the destroyed Church of Saint Andrew at Theatre Square. The effigy gives the chapel its alternative name, the Literary Chapel.
Paintings and memorials
Former central-altar painting
The former central-altar painting, The Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Stanisław, was painted by Palma il Giovane in 1618 for King Sigismund III Vasa. Napoleon ordered it confiscated and transported to Paris, but Warsaw authorities recovered it in the 1820s after the Congress of Vienna. It survived earlier wars and the bombing of Warsaw before being destroyed during the Second World War.
Lost and reconstructed monuments
Among the sculptures lost during the wartime destruction was a marble bust of Jan Franciszek Bieliński, Voivode of Malbork, who died in 1685. A voivode was a senior provincial governor and military-administrative official in historical Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The bust was carved by Jean-Joseph Vinache.
The neoclassical monument to Count Stanisław Małachowski commemorates the president of the Polish Sejm who helped establish the Constitution of 3 May 1791. Designed by Bertel Thorvaldsen and made in Rome, it was destroyed in 1944 when a German tank loaded with explosives blew up the southern part of the church. The monument was reconstructed in 1965. Małachowski’s grave is in Warsaw’s Church of the Holy Cross rather than in the cathedral.
Very little of the cathedral’s original furnishings survived the wartime destruction. The reconstructed interior therefore differs substantially from the pre-war church, although the Rococo altar and Virgin Mary effigy in the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception are among the elements brought back from the earlier interior. The cathedral also contains paintings that formerly belonged to the Polish kings John II Casimir Vasa, Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki, and John III Sobieski, and that were used during battles.
