The baroque started spreading across Wielkopolska in 17th century. Architects of Italian origin operated there, among whom excelled Pompeo Ferrari – a Rome-born author of several monumental structures such as the town-hall and churches in Leszno; and, churches in Poznań, Gostyń, Ląd, Obrzycko, Osieczna, Owińska and Wschowa.
For those willing to see just the baroque buildings in a single trip, we recommend going to the south of Wielkopolska. You start off in Poznań, offering you a post-Jesuit complex with the Parish Church as the landmark. Also the Franciscan Church on the Przemysł’s [Premislas’s] Hill is worth paying a visit to. Then on, your route takes you to Lubiń with its Benedictine cloister with a wonderful baroque interior décor; then, you will visit Gostyń to see its Holy Hill. A Philippine cloister is also to be seen there, featuring Poland’s largest dome of historic interest. Leszno is to be the next stop on your track. Most of the town’s edifices date to the baroque period. A town hall is worth seeing there, as are St. Nicholas’s Church and The Holy Cross Church. A real pearl of the baroque, unique as it is on a European scale, is Rydzyna – a locality situated beyond Leszno as you are on your way. There you will admire a baroque town-planning arrangement, a market square with a town hall and tiny tenement houses, St. Stanislaus’s Church and a castle with a beautiful park around it. On your way back to Poznań, you can pause for a while at Włoszakowice where you will see a palace built on an artificial triangular-shaped isle. Then on, you can see former Cistercian monasteries, rebuilt in a baroque style, Przemęt and Obra. The last stop on your route is a Franciscan cloister in Woźniki, embedded in a forest. On our way back to Poznań, we close up the loop of our baroque route across Wielkopolska.
Apart from the features we suggest you to visit on your track, worth seen are also buildings with polychromes of interest. These may include the churches in Ląd, Owińska as well as the wooden church in Wełna near Rogoźno and in Gąsawa on the Piast Route.
A phenomenon unique to the Polish baroque are and culture were coffin portraits – as peculiar keepsakes of a Sarmatian’s death and testimonies evidencing the traditions of yore. Coffin portraits form on the whole a masterpiece of art on an international scale. One of the largest collections of such portraits, dating to 17th/18th centuries, can be found at the Regional Museum in Międzyrzecz.
