Ruins of the Church in Smolęcin

The ruins of the Gothic church in Smolęcin, in Kołbaskowo municipality, are a stone rectangle of walls without a roof or tower. The building was erected at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, and after the Second World War, in the 1950s, it fell into ruin.

The building and its history

The church was a simple single-nave building on a rectangular plan measuring 15.6 by 9.2 m, without a separate chancel and without a tower. The walls were built of granite erratic boulders, and the reveals of the windows and doors were faced with brick. At the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries a wooden tower with a Baroque spire was added on the west side, in 1720 an altarpiece with a painting of the Crucifixion was made, and in the 19th century the church was rebuilt. Before 1945 it was a branch of the parish in Siadło Górne.

What remains today

The church survived the war undamaged, but no one put it to use afterwards. The perimeter walls still stand, with eight pointed-arch window openings and a portal in the south elevation. The original Gothic windows can be seen only in the east elevation, and the other windows and the portal bear traces of 19th-century rebuilding. The ruin is entered in the heritage register.

Practical information

• Village: Smolęcin, Kołbaskowo municipality, Police County.
• It is a ruin: do not treat the interior as a place to visit, and view the walls from the outside.
• Nearby stands the Church of the Holy Trinity in Kołbaskowo.
• Check the rules of access to the site on the spot.