dawny kościół Świętej Anny na Piasku, Wrocław

This is the former Church of Saint Anne on Piasek, a Gothic building that now serves as a preschool run by the Salesian Sisters. It began as the cemetery chapel for the Augustinian Canons’ monastery here, and also functioned as a subsidiary church until the end of the fifteenth century. The chapel rose between thirteen seventy-five and thirteen eighty-six, replacing houses that had stood opposite the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Its founder was Jan the Third of Prague, abbot of the Canons Regular on Piasek and a central figure in the medieval dispute known as causa vortret. By the entrance on the south wall, notice his surviving grave slab. The Manzl chronicle records that he was buried beneath the chapel’s high altar.

The building’s Gothic style belongs to the medieval tradition of soaring, pointed-arch architecture. Yet its later life changed it dramatically: after losing its religious role in eighteen ten, it became a store for artworks. An extensive rebuilding in eighteen eighteen removed the vaults and interior decoration, sealed the Gothic windows, and divided the structure into four storeys for Saint Anne’s municipal hospital.

War damage in nineteen forty-five destroyed the eastern gable; it was reconstructed in nineteen forty-eight. Since the nineteen fifties, the Salesian Sisters have made these old walls part of daily life for children.