Archikatedra Świętego Jana Chrzciciela, Wrocław

Those paired spires mark the Archcathedral of Saint John the Baptist, a Gothic cathedral on Cathedral Island and the seat of Wrocław’s archdiocese. Its dedication is to John the Baptist. The long brick walls and deep window openings give it the gravity of a church built for a bishop’s city.

This is the fourth cathedral to occupy this ground. Construction of the Gothic choir and its surrounding passage began in twelve forty-four, making this Wrocław’s earliest brick building. Gothic here means an architecture of soaring vertical lines and broad openings shaped to carry light.

A fire in fifteen forty destroyed the roof; another blaze in seventeen fifty-nine devastated the towers, roof, sacristy, and choir. The building endured the siege and bombardment of Breslau during the closing days of the Second World War, though about seventy percent of it was damaged. Its medieval Gothic framework survived, and restoration brought the roof and vaults back into use by nineteen fifty-one.

The tower spires regained their original conical form in nineteen ninety-one. Inside is Poland’s largest pipe organ, built in nineteen thirteen for Centennial Hall before coming here.