A Gothic hall church of the 13th-15th centuries with a 51.5 m tower, a font from the 13th century and Baroque furnishings, the dominant feature of the Old Town in Gryfice.
The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known as St Mary's, is a Gothic hall church with a tower 51.5 metres high and the dominant feature of the Old Town in Gryfice. As one of the few large town churches in the West Pomeranian Voivodeship, it has kept its Baroque interior furnishings.
The charter of Gryfice of 1262 granted the church four hides of land, and in 1297 a parish priest named Ludevinus was mentioned. The first mention of St Mary's Church itself dates from 1300. The church was built until the end of the 15th century, and it was consecrated in 1498 by Martin von Karith, Bishop of Kamień. The heritage register dates the building to the 13th-15th century.
In 1534 the town adopted the Reformation and the church became Lutheran. Lightning damaged the tower in 1562, and a fire in the town on 31 March 1658 destroyed most of the church, sparing the Lady Chapel. The rebuilding in 1659-1668 was financed, among others, by Elector Frederick William together with the townspeople. In 1870 the Szczecin architect Konrad Kruhl carried out a re-Gothicisation, and in 1909-1910 the church was renovated inside, changing the shape of the vault to a rib vault and covering the vault webs with polychrome painting. After the Second World War the church returned to the Catholics, and an independent parish was established here in 1977.
The church is oriented, Gothic, built of brick on foundations of granite boulders. It consists of a three-aisled, four-bay hall with a rectangular chancel and a narrower, square tower on the west, and the Lady Chapel was added to the body on the north and the sacristy on the south. The whole measures 61.95 by 25.75 metres, and vertical lines dominate the layout.
The four-storey tower is 51.5 metres high and includes Renaissance and Baroque elements. The present copper helm replaced a decayed Baroque helm in 1859. The main portal is in the west wall of the tower, on the Niepodległości Street side, and the side entrances are by the south wall of the body.
On the outer elevations can be seen metope friezes, mascarons, buttresses decorated with a cross and a lily, and tracery, rare in the sacred decoration of West Pomerania. A continuous frieze with a floral or vine motif on the nave body occurs only in this church.
Among the oldest elements of the furnishings is a late Romanesque granite font from the first half of the 13th century, today in the Lady Chapel. The high altar is Baroque, from around 1700, devoted entirely to the Passion of Christ. The side altar is a Gothic triptych from the second half of the 15th century, brought in the 1960s from the church in Górzyca.
The church has also preserved a late Baroque pulpit from the second half of the 18th century, more than 40 epitaphs from the 18th century and a Baroque painting of an angel on the vault of the crypt. In the Lady Chapel there is a carved wooden epitaph of Adam Fleming from 1717 and a candelabrum donated in 1727 by the mayor of Gryfice. The organ of 1911 was built by the Berlin organ builder Diense, and its Neo-Baroque case makes use of the original Baroque case. In the windows there is ornamental stained glass from around 1870.
By the south wall of the tower stands a bronze monument to John Paul II, unveiled in 2005.
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