Church of All Saints in Łaziska

In addition to the beautiful panoramas accompanying cyclists on the Iron Trail, the monuments located in the Godów municipality can provide an additional attraction. In Łaziska, near the newly built path (about 1 km west of Powstańców Śląskich Street from the exit to ŻŚR), there is the wooden Church of All Saints. It is one of the oldest wooden churches in Silesia and Poland. Until recently, it was believed that the church was built in 1579, as this date was carved on a beam next to the side entrance of the temple. However, in May 1998, during the church's renovation, incredibly valuable polychromes inscribed with the date "1560" were discovered on the walls of the nave after removing the cladding boards. It was assumed that the church must have been built much earlier for the polychromes to have been painted inside. Some architectural details of the church also support its earlier construction: distinct Gothic features, such as slender proportions and the support of the roof structure on an octagonal column standing in the middle of the nave. In 2008, dendrochronological studies of wood samples taken from the church in Łaziska were conducted. The analysis showed that almost all the building material was sourced in 1466-1467. The spatial layout of the wooden church in Łaziska consists of its main body and a bell tower attached from the west. The main body includes a nave, which is close to square in plan, and a narrower rectangular presbytery. The walls of the church's body, built of hewn pine beams, rest on foundations made of oak wedges, which is an extraordinary rarity in wooden sacred construction. On the northern wall of the church, you can see a peculiar remnant of actions from the end of World War II: a large hole caused in April 1945 by an artillery shell that entered the nave and did not explode. To commemorate this event, which could have had tragic consequences, it was decided to preserve the hole made by the shell in the wall and cover it with a glass pane painted with the symbol of Divine Providence. A wonderful complement to the church's interior is its polychromy. It is applied directly to the beams of the walls after filling the joints between them and priming. The paintings date back to 1560 and depict scenes from the Old and New Testaments. They once served as a "Bible Pauperum" - "Bible of the Poor," conveying the teachings and truths of faith proclaimed by the Church through wall images. The paintings include the Creation of the World, the story of original sin, the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, and Christ’s death on the cross. Outside the church, there is a medieval penance cross embedded in the fence and a stone medieval holy water font.