Plac Franciszkański, Wrocław

Plac Franciszkański is an Old Town square beside the Church of Saints Stanislaus, Dorothy and Wenceslaus, founded by Emperor Charles the Fourth in thirteen fifty-one. Once a private courtyard and later the site of a prison, it also borders Wrocław’s first Catholic primary school, run by the Salesian Sisters.

Plac Franciszkański is an Old Town square framed by the Church of Saints Stanislaus, Dorothy and Wenceslaus and the Salesian Sisters’ school building. The church’s main entrance opens onto Saint Dorothy Street and this square, making the square a natural threshold to the medieval church. Before the church existed, this ground was the courtyard of a large private estate.

Emperor Charles the Fourth endowed the church in thirteen fifty-one. It first belonged to Augustinian hermits, then passed to the Franciscans in fifteen thirty; four years later, the order handed it to the city authorities. The Franciscans regained its care in sixteen twelve.

That religious history did not run uninterrupted. After the nineteenth-century secularisation of church property, a prison was established here. In eighteen ninety, Saint Dorothy Street was extended south toward today’s Helena Modrzejewska Street, and a rectory was built beside the church.

Along the square’s northern edge stands the school run by the Salesian Sisters. Named for John Paul the Second, it was Wrocław’s first Catholic primary school. This little square holds a remarkable sequence: private courtyard, church forecourt, prison site, and a place of education.