An Abandoned Protestant Church [Stare Jaroszowice, Poland]

It was just a ruin on the way to more famous abandoned place in a village nearby. A decaying church which has already lost almost everything that once was making it so stunning, beginning with its beautiful interior and finishing with the elegant peak of the tower. Despite that there was something charmful about this place that invited to climb on the hill where the church was situated and enter the old ruins.

It’s difficult to say what exactly was making this place so impressive when I visited it—the greatness of the massive walls, a gloomy day (I went there during the rain), or maybe the combination of both, as there’s probably nothing that suits decaying ruins better than greyness around. In any case, one thing sure—it had some particular charm.

First thing which I saw after entering the building was a jungle of plants overtaking the place surrounded by high columns and arcs. The mentioned constructions allowed to recreate the image of the church in its times of greatness.

The walls were almost bare but, surprisingly, there were still a bit of polychrome left in some places that managed to avoid the destructive power of decay.

Similar as the constructions of arcs, it helped to see a bit of the beauty of the place when it was in use. It’s also worth to mention one more painting, much newer than the rest ones—a huge circle-shaped colourful graffiti, which different from graffiti, so common for most of abandoned places, didn’t look annoying or ‘not in the place’ at all. Even more, it was quite an impressive accent of this rather empty place, which looked a bit as if it was the eye of God taking watching over this place after people left it abandoned.

As it’s pretty obvious, the place had more glorious times than its gloomy presence. This sandstone Neo-Romanesque architecture church was built in 1842-1844 at the place of former wooden one. It became abandoned in 1945, and, as mentioned before not much has left of it now, and its conditions are getting worse and worse.

The gloomy ruin of the church was surrounded by an old cemetery with some decaying gravestones overtaken by the ivy. All these taken together were really beautiful, it was just important to be careful walking around and delighting the old graves, as there were quite a lot of not covered grave holes in the cemetery, large enough to imprison anyone who by some reason came there and made at least one uncareful step.

The mentioned abandoned temple requires a bit more attention than just a quick look. Before leaving the place it’s worth to stop for a while under the great walls of the ruin. To enter it one more time and walk among the thick plants. And, finally, to go a bit further, and see the church surrounded by an idyllic countryside landscape. It’s simply worth to have a look on the ruined temple and rememeber it while it’s still here. Little by little this church is falling apart in this way getting closer to the ground as if it was going to be burried in the old cemetery surrounding it.