Kościół pw. Świętego Jakuba, Gdańsk

Saint James Church is a rectorial church attached to Saint Bridget’s parish in the Gdańsk archdiocese. It is dedicated to James the Greater, the apostle. Trace the texture of the brickwork: the building belongs to the Gothic tradition.

In fourteen fifteen, Gdańsk shipmasters founded a chapel and hospital here for their patron. They replaced that chapel with this church during the years from fourteen thirty-two to fourteen thirty-seven. The newly consecrated church was burned by Hussites soon afterward, then rebuilt.

A lightning-caused fire devastated the building in sixteen thirty-six, and rebuilding produced the tower that remains. French forces later turned the church into a camp for Prussian and Russian prisoners. It subsequently became a municipal library and a navigation school, and later housed the city’s crafts chamber.

Wartime damage was slight, allowing its rare late-Renaissance larch beam ceiling to survive. Today, this is a protected provincial historic monument.