Gothic church from the end of the 13th century in Wolin, destroyed in 1945, secured as a permanent ruin and rebuilt by the end of the 1990s.
The Church of St Nicholas in Wolin, also called a collegiate church, is a Gothic brick building from the end of the 13th century. War and decades of neglect left of it the perimeter walls, the pillars and the tower, and it regained its full function as a church only at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. Today it is a parish church and one of the most important historic monuments of the town.
The latest research points to 1288 as the date of the church's founding, since it was first mentioned then. The two eastern, shorter bays were built before 1343, and the next three in the 14th century. Originally the interior had cross-rib vaults. In 1535 the church passed to the Lutherans. In 1628, during a fire in the town, it burned down, and the rebuilding lasted almost a hundred years and ended at the close of the 17th century. Then the tower received a Baroque crowning with an openwork cap, and the interior a Baroque character: the vaults of the aisles were not rebuilt, the main nave was lowered and galleries were added above the side aisles.
Before 1945 the church contained a Baroque high altar endowed by a will of 1668 by the townsman Joachim Wolter and his wife, and a late Renaissance pulpit of 1637. A wrought-iron pulpit candelabrum of 1630, made as a masterpiece, also hung here, and among the tomb slabs was that of the children of the Swedish general Niels Kagg. The oldest known bell dated from 1494. These furnishings are now a description of the past, not what a visitor will see.
The war destroyed the roof, the ceilings and the tower, and for a long time the authorities took no protective measures. In the 1960s part of the walls was demolished. A design from the late 1960s and early 1970s assumed preserving the building as a permanent ruin, and in 1978 the tower was rebuilt with a viewing point in mind. From 1988 the church was taken over by the parish of St Stanislaus and rebuilding began to a design by Janusz Nekanda-Trepka, lasting until 1998. The church was consecrated on 15 October 2000, and in December that year the parish changed its seat and dedication to St Nicholas. In 2009 stained-glass windows designed by Janusz Sobczyk were installed, showing the history of salvation. The entry also says that for years the church was said to have been 80 per cent destroyed, although the conservator estimated it at 50 per cent in 1945.
It is a hall-type, three-aisled Gothic building in the form of a pseudo-basilica, built on a rectangular plan and ended with two gables with recesses. On the west stands a square tower with a helm roof, and above the entrance runs a choir gallery. In the chancel there are two large windows with stained glass. The interior holds a painting of the patron saint, a copy of the painting of Our Lady of Częstochowa, a figure of Our Lady of Fátima and a wooden font.
Right next to it is the Andrzej Kaube Regional Museum, and about four hundred metres further on the open-air museum in Wolin. Two other churches also stand nearby, among them St Adalbert's Church.
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