Kościół pw. Świętego Michała Archanioła, Wrocław

St Michael the Archangel’s Church is Ołbin’s Neo-Gothic parish church, built between 1862 and 1871 to designs by Alexis Langer. Its eighty-metre tower, difficult construction history, connection with Edith Stein, and postwar rebuilding give the church an unusually layered story.

The tall brick church at the meeting of Bolesława Prusa and Wyszyńskiego streets is St Michael the Archangel’s, the parish church of Ołbin. Built from 1862 to 1871 to designs by Alexis Langer, it is Neo-Gothic: a nineteenth-century return to the pointed, vertical language of medieval churches. The building’s long mass is reinforced by buttresses and sharpened by pointed windows.

Its construction had a dramatic setback when the north tower collapsed. That tower was completed at a lower height, Langer was removed from the project, and Karl Lüdecke finished the work. The surviving tower rises eighty metres, making this one of Wrocław’s tallest buildings.

This church carried meaning beyond its parish: it was the first major Catholic church built in Wrocław after the city became Prussian, and it became a Catholic answer to the Kulturkampf. Edith Stein prayed here between 1922 and 1933 while living nearby; the chapel dedicated to her occupies the church’s left-hand side. Severe damage during the siege of Wrocław nearly brought demolition, but the Salesians received the church in 1947 and rebuilt it. The steep copper-covered roof over the nave and transept was restored to its earlier form between 2002 and 2004.