Inside Saint Barbara’s Church

There was a much smaller church besides the Saint Mary’s Basilica named Saint Barbara’s Church. This church used to be a cemetery chapel but was turned into a church because the German population of Krakow needed a place of worship after Polish was deemed the language for services in Saint Mary’s Basilica. I don’t quite understand this since it should be possible to have another service for the Germans. This is common practice in multilingual countries. Anyway, they eventually moved to Saint Barbara’s Church which wasn’t too far from the existing church.

There didn’t seem to be any service going on at the time of my visit, so I was free to go in a take photos of the inside of the church. This turned out to be a difficult affair. The interior of the church was very dark, it was almost creepy. There were light near the altar but that wasn’t enough to illuminate the rest of the church. Despite the dark conditions of the church, it was quite obvious that the church was very richly decorated. There was liberal use of gold in the interiors as old churches tend to be. It was a pity that I couldn’t see it in its full glory.

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