Church of St Jacek
635 47 00. @ 116, 122, 174, 175, 180, 195, 303, 503, 518.
At the beginning of the 17th century, while the Jesuits were building a Baroque church in Old Town, the Dominicans started work on a Gothic chancel for the Church of St Jacek (Kosciol sw Jacka). They returned to the Gothic
style partly because of the conservatism of Mazovian buildings and partly in an attempt to endow the church with the appearance of age, so as to create an illusion of the age-old traditions of the order - which had in fact only been set up in Warsaw in 1603. When work was interrupted by a plague that raged in Warsaw in 1625, the few remaining monks listened to confessions and gave communion through openings drilled in the doors. The work
was completed in 1639. Next to it was erected the largest monastery in Warsaw.
Interesting features inside the church, rebuilt after World War II, include the beautiful vaulting above the aisles, the Gothic chancel, decorated with stuccowork of the Lublin type, and the 17th-century tombstones shattered in 1944. The Baroque tomb of Adam and Malgorzata Kotowski, by the Dutch architect Tylman van Gameren, is also noteworthy. The domed chapel in which it stands is decorated with portraits, painted on tin plate, of the donors, who became prosperous and were ennobled despite their humble origins.
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