Kościół pw. Świętego Wincentego à Paulo, Kraków

St Vincent de Paul Church is a Neo-Gothic Vincentian church on Kraków’s Kleparz district, built in 1875–1877 to plans by Filip Pokutyński. Its site was once a temporary cemetery after an earlier church was demolished, while its interior includes a 1935 marble-and-alabaster high altar and a historic Crucifixion painting.

St Vincent de Paul Church is the Vincentian community’s Roman Catholic church on Kleparz, at 17–19 Saint Philip Street. It is dedicated to Vincent de Paul. The church you see now was built between 1875 and 1877, following plans by Filip Pokutyński.

Its Neo-Gothic style is a nineteenth-century revival of medieval Gothic forms, while its design takes inspiration from fourteenth-century Italy. This plot had already endured an extraordinary cycle of destruction and renewal. A church of Saints Philip and James stood here by 1373; fires destroyed it in 1528 and 1755, and Swedish forces ruined its rebuilt form in 1655.

Austrian authorities finally had the surviving church demolished in 1801, and for several years the vacant ground became a temporary municipal cemetery. The Vincentians arrived in Kleparz in 1861 and acquired this parcel two years later. The sanctuary was enlarged in 1911 and 1912, when the chancel was extended and a Lourdes chapel was added.

Inside, the high altar is white marble and alabaster, made in 1935. The right-hand side altar holds a Baroque Crucifixion painting from 1700, brought to Kraków in 1945 after its earlier home near Lviv. It has been kept here since 1976.