Cont'd:
We entered Swidnica town right during afternoon rush hour and there was a lot of road construction going on, so it probably took us longer than normal to get to the Church. We parked on a side street then our driver guide escorted us to the Church of Peace explaining some of the history, walked us around the site extents and then accompanied us inside. We were given a very detailed English flyer explaining all about the Church, and there was a narration playing over a loud speaker that alternated between Polish and English. So between the flyer and the narration we got a good overview. I’ve honestly never seen anything like this Church before. We learned that the Peace Churches (the one in Swidnica being one of 3 originally built in this region) were built during a time when Protestants were not allowed to have their own places of worship, and only due to a change in governance were they allowed to finally build their own Church but it had to follow a strict set of guidelines: had to be paid for and built directly by the congregation, could only use temporary materials like wood, sod, thatch to construct the structure, no bell tower allowed, and the building had to be built in no more than 1 year. Since made of wood, the structure was not intended to last for a long period of time (fire risk and all), which makes it all the more amazing that this wooden church is still standing in its original condition over 400 years later. I found the interior to be spectacular and I couldn’t stop staring at all the intricacies of construction and architecture within. The church is 3 levels of almost solid pews, which meant that once filled with people the whole space warmed with body heat, which was a good thing since there was no other source of heat in the building (again, fire risk). We spent probably close to an hour at the Church, then headed back to Wroclaw for the evening, experiencing a lot of traffic getting back into town. It was probably close to 5pm by the time we got dropped off. We were pretty hungry by this point and wanted to have a nice last polish meal to end our vacation. We dined at Spitz, a historic tavern under the Town Hall and had a lovely filling meal (120zl/pp).