Saint John the Baptist church in Dobczyce, Classical church in Dobczyce, Poland.
Saint John the Baptist Church is a classical structure with a single-nave design and a three-sided choir topped by a western tower built from stones of the nearby castle. The building sits on a hillside above the cemetery within medieval town walls.
The present church was built in 1828–1834 by Jan Turnau, owner of Dobczyce from 1818, and finished by his son Jakub. It replaced an earlier building closed and demolished after 1790. Some of its masonry came from the dismantled Dobczyce castle. The 16th-century marble epitaph of Sebastian Lubomirski's child was moved into the new church.
The church keeps a 16th-century children's epitaph of Sebastian Lubomirski: a white marble slab in a profiled frame, Renaissance in style, split into two panels. The upper panel shows a relief of a reclining child propped on a skull, with the Lubomirski coat of arms in the upper left corner. Three of the five altars were made by Kajetan Domasiewicz in 1851, and the Stations of the Cross date from the 18th century.
The church stands on a hill in the north-eastern corner of the old town layout, inside the line of the medieval town walls, so the approach is uphill. The three-arch bell tower stands in the churchyard beside the building. The building is entered from the west side, below the tower.
The oldest bell in the three-arch tower, 105 cm across and cast in 1504, carries a German inscription on its collar: whoever cast it is of good cheer, for God will grant him salvation, so he need not worry about wealth. The bell was cast in honour of Saint John. The other two bells were made at the Felczyński foundry in Przemyśl in 1975.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 93,915 contributors worldwide.