Kościół pw. Świętego Marcina, Warszawa

St. Martin’s Church, tucked along Piwna Street in Warsaw’s Old Town, is the historic church before you. It bears the name of Martin of Tours.

The church’s foundation dates to thirteen fifty-three, and an early sanctuary dedicated to Martin and Dorothy rose here around thirteen eighty. A fire in fourteen seventy-eight gutted its interior, consuming artworks, ornaments, the timber roof, and part of the Augustinians’ documents; only the main-altarpiece painting survived. Notice the façade’s animated decorative surface: Karol Bay designed its Baroque face in seventeen forty-four.

Its recorded style is rococo, a playful and highly ornamented manner. The church was destroyed in nineteen forty-four and rebuilt after the war, with much of the interior newly designed by Sister Alma Skrzydlewska. Her sgraffito Stations of the Cross mark the side walls.

In May nineteen seventy-seven, opposition figures began a week-long hunger strike here, demanding freedom for detained workers and members of KOR. The church remains the rectorial church of the Franciscan Sisters Servants of the Cross, and it holds the remains of Władysław Korniłowicz.