Church of Christ the King in Recz

The Church of Christ the King in Recz is a Gothic brick hall building of 1352-1355, built using fragments of an earlier church of the 13th century. It has three aisles, a four-storey tower 24 metres high and star vaults in the nave. The most valuable element of the interior is a wooden altar from the early 17th century. The church is a parish church, in the Choszczno deanery of the Szczecin-Kamień Archdiocese.

A Gothic church of the 14th century

The church was built in 1352-1355. It is oriented, with a chancel with a three-sided end on the east and buttressed walls. The nave body is covered with a gable roof. On the west rises a tower covered with a hipped roof, decorated with blind recesses on the gables and façades, with an entrance portal on the ground floor. Side portals are in the north and south walls, and a chapel and sacristy were added to the chancel.

The church was rebuilt in the 15th and 19th centuries. After the Second World War, on 4 November 1945, it was consecrated as a Catholic church, and in 1984-1986 it was renovated. The nave body measures 22.2 by 21.9 metres, the chancel 12.4 by 10.7 metres, and the height of the naves is 9 metres. The usable floor area is about 835 square metres.

The altar of 1607

The high altar reaches almost to the vault and is richly decorated and polychromed. Its making is dated to 1607 (an inscription with this date appears in two places) or to 1607-1611. In the predella is a relief of the Last Supper with figures of Christ and the eleven apostles. The first tier of the retable contains a scene of the Crucifixion, sculptures of the evangelists and of two angels with shields bearing the arms of the Neumark and of Recz. The second tier has a scene of the Deposition from the Cross and figures of the apostles Paul and Peter.

The crowning has the form of a pediment with a figure of God the Father, and the whole is topped by a sculpture of the Risen Christ with four legionaries. Fragments of a Gothic triptych are incorporated into the altar.

Other furnishings

The aisles are covered by a cross-rib vault supported on octagonal pillars. Besides the altar, the church has preserved a 17th-century polychromed pulpit, a late Gothic crucifix from the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, a limestone font of the 14th century in Romanesque forms and stone tomb slabs from 1603-1746. On the tower hang three historic bells: a Gothic one from 1520 and Renaissance ones from 1567 and 1593.

Practical information

• Address: Ratuszowa Street, Recz, Choszczno County.
• The church is in use as a parish church. Mass times are given on the parish website (parafiarecz.pl). The interior is best viewed outside services.
• About 2 kilometres from the town lies the Grądowe Zbocze nature reserve.