St Florian’s and St Michael’s Cathedral

Neo-gothic church dated 1888-1901. The church is one of the most distinctive features of Praga and its towers can be seen from a far distance, even on the other side of the Vistula River. The design was based on a project by Józef Pius Dziekoński. At the turn of the 19th and 20th century, the gothic style aspired to become the Polish national style, and a church would counterbalance the nearby Bysantine Orthodox church, a symbol of Russian occupation. The Catedral was viewed by its contemporaries as one of the most beautiful Polish churches, and its design was later replicated in different Polish cities.

The church was consecrated on 29th September 1901, Archangel Michael’s day, the cathedral’s patron saint. The building was designed to hold 10,000 people. The walls and the vaults were decorated with Moorish-style polichromy made by a couple of painters, Strzałeccy brothers. The vault of the choir was adorned with golden garlands on a blue background. The inside of the church was furnished with, among other things, a wooden goblet-shaped pulpit decorated with pictures of saints and two side altars, Saint Anthony’s altar and Ascension altar. In the original project the main altar was supposed to be a carbon copy of the famous Wit Stwosz’s altar from Mariacki Church in Kraków, but eventually the idea was abandoned.

The cathedral was destroyed within one day, 14th September 1944, when the World War II front line reached Warsaw. When the Germans were forced to retreat from Praga by the advancing Soviet troops, they blew up the church. The same was intended for the nearby Praski Hospital, but the construction of the cathedral proved so robust that the Germans had to use all their explosive material to destroy it. As a result, the hospital was spared from destruction.

The only elements of the construction that withstood the explosion were fragments of transept with, surprisingly, the statues of the two patron saints of the temple. The statues were made in 1894 by Tadeusz Skonieczny and funded by Henryk Piaszczyski and Michał Podhorski. The sculptures can be still seen in the same place: Saint Michael’s statue from Floriańska Street and Saint Florian’s from Sierakowskiego Street.

The cathedral was reconstructed after the war. The works were based on a project drawn up by professor Mączeński and were completed in 1970. The shape of the original cathedral and its 75-metre towers were reconstructed. However, the post-war building is not adorned with the multitude of stone-carved sculptures, an immense window in the middle of the facade and the clock on the left tower.