Description of the attraction
The Orthodox Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius is located on the Sandy Island. This small church was formerly known as the Church of St. Jacob. It belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, all services here were held in Latin. It was erected in the 17th century in a baroque manner.
This temple was the first sacral structure built in Wroclaw in the Baroque style. Something about the future church did not suit the city council, so it froze the construction of the temple for an indefinite period. Only the intervention of the monarch's person - King Leopold I - led to the fact that the construction of the church was nevertheless brought to its logical conclusion. Grateful residents placed on the top of the facade of the church the image of the imperial coat of arms, on the field of which there were the initials of the ruler. The church was also decorated with several sculptures of the patron saints of this church.
The temple was badly damaged during the hostilities of the Second World War. The Polish Orthodox Church undertook to restore it. The city authorities gave her a plot of land with a destroyed church in 1970. The interior had to be decorated from scratch: nothing remained of the previous decoration of the temple. The icons were brought from Warsaw, and the iconostasis was brought from the village of Strvenzhik. The vaults and walls of the church were painted by experienced craftsmen, sketches for the frescoes were created by the artist Adam Stalona-Dobzhansky. At the end of the 20th century, the church, consecrated with the names of Saints Cyril and Methodius, also received new stained glass windows on biblical themes.
As a result of work on the restoration of the church, an old crypt was found, where liturgies are now held.
Today, services in the church are carried out in Polish, Old Church Slavonic and Greek.
