Wielkopolska’s oldest surviving buildings are made of stone. These are connected with the birth of the Polish state and the acceptance of the then new religion of Christianity by Duke Mieszko I. Carolingian and Ottonian art was inspired by the many contacts the early Piasts made with the Holy Roman Empire.
The oldest sacred buildings – baptisteries, including baptismal fonts – have been unearthed in the Ostrów Lednicki and Poznań grads. The earliest churches and monasteries were also built near the seats of power, on grads or their environs. The palatine hills on which the earliest rulers resided likewise go back 1,000 years.
The ruins on Ostrów Lednicki – an island in Lake Lednica (Gniezno County) – are the country’s best preserved architectural complexes from the earliest days of the state. This was the site of a grad housing a group of buildings comprising an extended palace complex and a chapel with a central configuration.
The first cathedral was built in Poznań at the end of the 10th century, following the adoption of Christianity and the creation of a bishopric in the city in 968. The three-nave basilica was 49 m long, its main nave was 8.5 m wide and had a presbytery with an apse at the end. Relics from the Romanesque and pre-Romanesque buildings can be seen in the basement of the present cathedral. There are fragments of walls made of field stones cemented with lime mortar and mounted on glacial erratic foundations, a part of a baptismal font and stone tombs – most likely the remains of the graves of the first Polish kings, Mieszko I and Bolesław Chrobry (Boleslaus the Brave). A hardened lime mortar baptismal font with a diameter of approx. 4 m probably predates the first church.
During the reign of Mieszko I, a pre-Romanesque temple stood on the area adjoining the Gniezno grad. Długosz wrote that Dobrawa was buried here. Substantial fragments of an earlier building uncovered in the basement of the present cathedral are on display. These include the apse with remnants of its polychrome decorations, parts of the floor with coloured glazed ceramic tiles, and a tombstone in its original place with a four-verse inscription dating back to c. 1008 (making it the oldest in Poland) saying that the earthly remains of three religious brothers lay there.
Churches serving monastic societies also appeared in Wielkopolska during the Piast era. The 3-nave St. John Basilica in the Benedictine Abbey in Mogilno, which dates from the mid-16th century, was one of Poland’s most majestic architectural achievements. The western crypt, once situated under the tower, is covered with a groin vault, supported in the middle by a massive pillar. This is the oldest surviving vault in Poland.
Two of the churches in Strzelno are of special interest. The Church of the Holy Trinity was built for the Premonstratensian Sisters as a three-nave basilica with a transept and chapels. Subsequent reconstructions have distorted the Romanesque body of the temple whose interior has Romanesque, Gothic and baroque elements. The four Romanesque columns between the naves of the basilica, uncovered from under a brick wall, are of a kind seldom seen anywhere in the world. Two of them are embellished with bas-relief figures and the extraordinary richness of their decoration speaks volumes for the craftsmanship of the stonemason. The north portal tympanum was the second celebrated post-war discovery to be made in the church. This probably dates from the end of the 12th century and is one of the most impressive of its kind in Poland.
