Kościół pw. Ducha Świętego, Wrocław

Kościół pw. Ducha Świętego is a modern two-level parish church in Wrocław’s Tarnogaj district. Built between 1973 and 1981 after a restrictive one-building permit, it ingeniously places a chapel beneath its raised main nave. Its cone-like roof and fifty-four-metre height make it a distinctive local landmark.

Kościół pw. Ducha Świętego is the modern parish church on Bardzka Street in Tarnogaj, with worship spaces arranged on two levels. Its unusual single mass comes from a hard-won building permit.

In 1972, the Church was allowed to build here only on the condition that the whole project counted as one structure. Waldemar Wawrzyniak, Jerzy Wojnarowicz and Tadeusz Zipser answered by raising the main nave and concealing a chapel below it. The approved drawings described that lower space as sand-filled; the architects instead made it usable for services.

Construction began in 1973 through the efforts of parish priest Stefan Wójcik and finished in 1981. The lower chapel welcomed its first service on Christmas Eve 1975, while the upper church was first used for Mass in 1979. Local craftspeople and carpenters from Podhale helped build it.

The shared roof rises like an approximate cone and ends in a cross held by a flower-shaped cup. At fifty-four metres high, the church commands this open stretch of the district. The bold orange exterior and figurative work above the entrance, including an image of John Paul the Second, were added in the early twenty-first century.