Police lies on the Oder, right next to Szczecin, and its sacred history is spread across three places and several eras. The oldest church stands in the former village of Jasienica, where the Augustinians settled in the Middle Ages. On the Old Town market square a Gothic chapel has survived from the Church of St Mary, and in the northern housing estates stand newer parish churches.

The Augustinian monastery in Jasienica

The Augustinians were brought to Jasienica in 1331 by the Duke of Pomerania Barnim III. According to Wikipedia the monks regulated the Gunica river, founded a mill, had several inns, grew hops, kept sheep and pigs, and received from the duke permission to fish in the Szczecin Lagoon. The Wikipedia entry on Jasienica itself links the beginnings of the village and of the monks' care with acts of Barnim III from around 1330 and notes that at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries the monastery and the village were plundered by robbers, and the monks fell into organisational and moral disorder.

The monastery was dissolved in 1534, in connection with the introduction of the Reformation in the Duchy of Pomerania. In 1543-1583 a teachers' college founded by Duke Barnim XI was housed here, and then the building became a ducal hunting castle. At the end of the 16th century the governor of the Swedish king, Nils Bielke, rebuilt the buildings and concealed the Gothic forms, and in 1769-1775 Elisabeth Christine Ulrike of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel rebuilt them again in the Late Neoclassical style. According to Wikipedia, after her divorce from Frederick William II, later king of Prussia, she rested here, exiled to Szczecin.

What remains of the monastery

Today the Augustinian monastery in Police-Jasienica is a ruin. Wikipedia states that in the 1960s the upper storeys were taken down and the ground-floor walls were left in the form of a so-called permanent ruin. The perimeter walls of the south and east wings have survived to the height of the first floor, along with the cellars. The buildings formed two two-storey wings and a church, together open to the west around a courtyard, and the buildings had a cloister with blind niches, in which a ceramic Maltese cross was discovered. According to Wikipedia the Augustinian Fair is held every year on the site of the ruins.

Right next to it stands the Church of Saints Peter and Paul the Apostles, which Wikipedia calls the oldest of the three churches in the town and which until the Reformation was part of the monastery. The first church on this site, dedicated to the Holy Cross, was mentioned in sources in 1299. According to the parish website and Wikipedia it was built of wooden logs, and after a fire in the 14th century it was rebuilt from sandstone and field stones.

At the end of the 17th century the church fell into ruin, was taken down and rebuilt in the Gothic style, being enlarged in 1725. Wikipedia notes that only the chapel survived from the original building. After a fire in 1858 a new tower was built over the nave, a chancel was added from the east, and in the 20th century a porch. In the chancel an oil painting from 1858 has survived, Christ in Conversation with Mary and Martha. In 2017 an organ from the theological seminary in Szczecin, originally from the Church of St Stanislaus Kostka in Szczecin, was installed in the church.

The Police market square and the Church of St Mary

In Police itself the oldest memento is the Gothic chapel by Bolesław Chrobry Square, that is, on the Old Town market square. According to Wikipedia it is a remnant of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary from the 13th or 14th century, demolished in 1895 because of its poor technical condition. The heritage register, cited by zabytek.pl, dates the chapel itself to the 15th century, while Wikipedia speaks of a chapel by an older church, so the dates are not uniform.

The chapel adjoined the south wall of the church. As long as a cemetery lay around it, that is, until about 1500, it served as a charnel house. Later an altar was placed in it, which stood here until 1910. The brick building was set on a foundation of erratic boulders. A pointed-arch portal with stepped jambs and blind niches decorate the south wall, and the gables are decorated with blind niches in a pyramidal arrangement. Renovation was completed at the beginning of December 2009, and since 2010 the chapel has housed the Tourist and Cultural Information Centre. Next to it begins the Police PTTK Trail.

The site of the former Church of St Mary is today occupied by the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, built in 1894, when thorough changes were being made to the town's architecture. Its tower, more than sixty metres high, is according to Wikipedia a characteristic element of the Old Town skyline. During the Second World War the roof was destroyed and the interior stripped, and after the war the roof was rebuilt. The church, together with the churchyard, is entered in the heritage register. In the 1970s the interior was painted again, stained glass was installed in the windows of the side nave, and the sgraffito in the chancel and the nave was made by Kazimierz Bieńkowski.

The town's newest church

The third church is the youngest. The Church of St Casimir the Prince stands on the Anny Jagiellonki estate, and its parish is according to Wikipedia the most populous in the Szczecin-Kamień archdiocese. Construction began in 1992 with the foundations, from June 1993 masses were already celebrated within the bare walls, and the main structure was completed in April 1996. In mid-1999 three bells blessed by John Paul II were hung in the bell turret. The church was designed so that about five thousand people could fit in the whole interior.

In the right side nave is the chapel of Our Lady of Fatima, where since 2014 relics of the blood of John Paul II have been kept, and in the left the chapel of St Casimir. The church has an organ of fifty-five stops, brought from Switzerland and rebuilt for the needs of the interior.

The petrol factory in the background

In the western part of Police there also stand the remains of the Hydrierwerke Pölitz plant, a German synthetic petrol factory from the years of the Second World War. This is a completely different chapter in the history of the town from the medieval monastery and the town's churches.