Kościół parafialny pw. Bożego Ciała, Wrocław

Corpus Christi Church is the brick Gothic parish church at the corner of Świdnicka and Bożego Ciała streets. Its plain, towerless mass belongs to the former commandery of the Knights Hospitaller. Brick Gothic means medieval architecture shaped in brick rather than carved stone, and this church’s present form dates from the first half of the fifteenth century.

It is among Wrocław’s three largest fifteenth-century basilicas, with three aisles beneath a main nave nearly twenty-three metres high. The missing main tower is no accident. The Hospitallers’ rule stressed poverty, while a tower in the Middle Ages advertised power and status.

This building also had a military role beside the city walls and the Świdnicka Gate; defensive turrets once formed part of it. Its history has been unusually bruising. A nearby gunpowder-tower blast damaged it badly in seventeen forty-nine, and during the Seven Years’ War it became a grain store.

In the siege of Festung Breslau in early nineteen forty-five, the church lost an estimated seventy-five percent of its fabric. Reconstruction finally took place from nineteen fifty-five to nineteen sixty-two, followed by further work through nineteen seventy. Inside, a thirty-six-stop electro-pneumatic organ was built in nineteen seventy-seven.