Corpus Christi Church, Kraków

Corpus Christi Church, Kraków tickets: which one to buy

Corpus Christi stands in Kazimierz, the former separate town south of Krakow's old centre, a fifteen-minute walk from the main square or a few stops by tram, and it is free to enter. Walking tours of Kazimierz usually concentrate on the Jewish quarter, its synagogues and the cemetery, and many pass this church without going in, which is a pity because the interior is among the best in the city. Tours that cover the whole of Kazimierz, Christian and Jewish, include it, and they give the better picture of how the district worked.

The church is run by the Canons Regular of the Lateran, who still occupy the monastery beside it, and it is used constantly for services; visiting pauses then. Organ concerts are held in the summer. There is nothing to book, and the church works well as the first stop on a Kazimierz morning before the cafes around the old Jewish square open. Trams along the main avenue of Kazimierz stop two minutes from the door.

Visiting Corpus Christi Church, Kraków: what to see

Casimir the Great founded Kazimierz and its parish church in 1340, and the brick Gothic building, finished in the early fifteenth century, is one of the largest churches of its period in Poland, with a tall stepped gable and a tower topped with a later baroque cupola. The interior is the surprise. Tall Gothic arcades carry a baroque fitting of exceptional richness: a towering black and gold high altar, carved choir stalls, dozens of side altars and a pulpit carved in the form of a boat, held up by mermaids and dolphins, with its mast and rigging rising above the preacher.

The tomb of Stanislaw Kazimierczyk, a fifteenth-century canon beatified in 1993 and canonised in 2010, stands in a side chapel and is a place of local pilgrimage. Traces of medieval stained glass survive in the choir windows. The monastery next door has a cloister that can sometimes be seen on request. Carved stalls in the choir were made for the canons in the seventeenth century and are still used for their daily office.

Corpus Christi Church, Kraków opening hours and the best time to go

Morning light comes through the choir windows and is the best for the gilded altar; the church closes briefly around midday on some days and during services. Kazimierz fills up in the evening, when its bars and restaurants become the liveliest in the city, and the church is a quiet contrast in the hours before. The feast of Corpus Christi, in late spring or early summer, brings a procession through the district that starts here.

The Jewish Culture Festival in late June and early July fills the streets nearby with concerts. Winter is cold but the interior is lit for evening services and looks at its most theatrical then. Allow half an hour for the church, and combine it with the market square of Nowy, the old synagogue and the walk along the river to Wawel.