St. Vitalis Church in Włocławek

It is a single-aisle building, with a separate rectangular presbytery closed polygonally, leaning to the left from the axis of the body, to resemble the position of Jesus dying on the cross.

[1] The temple was founded by bishop Maciej of Gołańcza in 1330, just after Włocławek was demolished and the former cathedral on the Vistula River burned down by the Teutonic Knights in 1329.

Bishop Władysław Oporowski organized a fundraiser to rescue St. Vitalis's Church, at the same time appointing a special indulgence for donors.

It was not until 1866 that the church went into the exclusive use of the seminary (the faithful gathered there only for the indulgenced feast of St. Vitalis, which falls on the second Sunday of May and sporadically on other separate occasions).

In the nineteenth and twentieth century the church of St. Vitalis was repeatedly renovated, painted and had its interior decoration changed.

In 1888 the ruined tower was pulled down and a new one, in the Gothic style, according to the design by Konstanty Wojciechowski, was put up and covered with copper sheet.

The interior plasters were ripped off and new ones were added; the ribs, which were partially cut in the Baroque period, were now completed and left in "live" brick; the former music choir was removed and a new one was created from the part of the adjacent seminary corridor; plastered parts from outside the walls were uncovered; a valuable Gothic triptych from around 1460 was placed in the main altar.

A new clay roof was laid, rotten bricks in the walls were replaced and external decorative elements were reconstructed.