Thorn Church

The church was part of the Franciscan monastery of Thorn, which was founded around 1239 in the newly established city. Remains of the first church are still present. A new building was started in the late 13th century and completed in the 14th century. In the wake of the Reformation, the city of Thorn and with it the Church of St. Mary became Lutheran. The first Lutheran service was celebrated on March 25, 1557. In 1724, after the so-called Thorn Blood Bath, it was taken from the Lutherans as an act of punishment and handed over to the Catholic order of the Bernardines, who were specially settled in Thorn for this purpose. They removed the furnishings designed 160 years earlier for Protestant worship and redesigned the church in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. On December 8, 1724, the Catholic consecration sermon was delivered in Polish by the Jesuit Father Kazimierz Wieruszewski. The Bernardine order used the church until 1821. Since 1830, the church has been a Roman Catholic parish church.

The present church was essentially built in the 14th century. It is a three-aisled hall church with a length of 80 m, a width of 27 m and a height of 27 m. The interior was redesigned in Baroque style in the 18th century. Remarkable are wall paintings from about 1380 with depictions of saints. The choir stalls are from the 15th century. The high altar was made in the 18th century.