St. Anne’s Church

You’re now facing the beautiful St. Anne’s Church. This Roman Catholic church is one of the finest examples of Baroque architecture in Poland. The church you see today was built on the ruins of a Gothic church destroyed in a fire in 1689. The new church was meant to serve as the collegiate church for the nearby university. Its construction was made possible thanks to the support of professors from the Kraków Academy, along with King John III Sobieski—a former student himself. The Dutch architect took inspiration from the Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome, and built a church that reflected the prestige of Kraków’s academics. Its grand dome rests on four pendentives, each decorated with one of the cardinal virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude. Inside, you’ll find the sarcophagus of Saint John Cantius, carried by four allegorical figures representing the university’s main faculties: Medicine, Law, Philosophy, and Theology. You’ll also see a monument to Nicolaus Copernicus, another brilliant mind who studied here. Copernicus, as you may know, was the first to declare that the Sun—not the Earth—was at the center of the universe, and that the planets revolved around it. This contradicted the geocentric view thought by the Church at the time, which claimed that Earth was at the centre of everything. Fearing backlash from religious authorities, Copernicus delayed publishing his findings. He was right to be cautious—the Church couldn’t accept that Earth, the site of divine creation, wasn’t the centre of the cosmos. After his trial and condemnation by the Inquisition, the Church avoided honouring him in any way. The statue was erected once his ideas were no longer controversial with Church authorities. Copernicus remained imprisoned until his death, and his revolutionary ideas, passed around in secret among the great minds of the time, were later confirmed by Galileo, Kepler, and Isaac Newton.