A Gothic collegiate church from the early 15th century with granite fragments from the 13th century, a Baroque high altar from 1697 and a Buchholz organ.
The Collegiate Church of St John the Baptist in Myślibórz is a parish church from the early 15th century, with granite fragments from the second half of the 13th century. It stands on Kolegiacka Street, right by the town hall. The church has a Gothic body with a tower, a Baroque high altar from 1697 and an organ from the mid-19th century.
In the 1260s the first church was built of granite blocks, but it was soon destroyed, most probably in 1271 during the invasion of Duke Bolesław the Pious. In 1298 Margrave Albert III established a collegiate chapter, which supervised the churches in the Neumark. According to the parish website, until 1945 the collegiate church was dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul.
The church was destroyed several times. In 1433 it was burnt by the Hussites. In 1538 it became a Protestant church, and in 1539 a great fire in the town damaged it so badly that for about 50 years the function of parish church was performed by the Dominican monastery church. The collegiate church was rebuilt in 1582-1593, then destroyed by the invasion of imperial troops in 1630 and by a fire in 1655. Another rebuilding in the 1670s gave the vaults and pulpit that survive to this day.
After the Second World War, on 7 October 1945, the church was blessed as a Catholic one. Since 1992 it has been the seat of the Myślibórz Collegiate Chapter. In 2009 a failure occurred in the tower, in which the tracery of the window on the south side collapsed and deep cracks appeared. From 2010 a general renovation was carried out: first of the tower, then of the foundations, the walls on the south and east sides and the north elevation.
The church is an oriented hall building of stone and brick, with three aisles and three bays, a straight-ended chancel and a tower to the west. The nave and chancel have a barrel vault with lunettes, and the aisles have cross vaults. The elevation has tall, three-part pointed-arch windows, and the tower is decorated with pointed-arch blind arcades and a Renaissance portal from 1585. The tower is crowned with a conical spire.
The Baroque high altar was founded in 1697 on the initiative of two mayors of Myślibórz, Andreas Rothe and Georg Dalack. It is 13.5 m high and consists of a predella with a relief of the Last Supper, a two-tier retable with a scene of the Crucifixion and figures of the four Evangelists, and a crowning with the Risen Christ. It was made by the woodcarver Heinrich Bernhard Hattenkerel of Moryń, although some sources attribute to him only a small part of the work. On the predella stand two caryatids symbolising the Synagogue and the Ecclesia.
The wooden pulpit from the 1670s has painted images of the four Evangelists and pictures of Jacob's ladder and of Jonah cast up on the shore by the great fish, and its canopy is crowned by a pelican feeding its young with its own blood. The organ was built in 1843-1848 by Carl August Buchholz of Berlin.
Within four hundred metres lies the Myślibórz Lakeland Museum.
Very close by is also the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy.
On the same walk you can see the Dominican monastery, whose church, according to the parish website, served as the parish church after the fire of 1539.
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