Church of Saints Peter and Paul

The Church of Saints Peter and Paul is the first Baroque building in Kraków and one of the finest in Poland — a white-faced Italian import on a street of Gothic and Renaissance neighbours that announced, when it was completed in 1635, that the Counter-Reformation had arrived and it had budget. The Jesuits built it to impress, and the façade — modelled on Il Gesù in Rome — succeeds spectacularly.

The twelve apostle statues lining the fence in front of the church are the most photographed sculptures in Kraków. Carved in the early 18th century, they stand on pedestals like a receiving line, each identifiable by their traditional attributes — Peter with his keys, Paul with his sword, Andrew with his X-shaped cross. The originals were too weathered by pollution and had to be replaced with copies in the 1980s; the originals are inside.

The interior is a single-nave barrel vault of white stucco that feels vast and bright after the dark Gothic churches elsewhere in the Old Town. The acoustics are extraordinary, and the church hosts regular classical concerts — Bach, Vivaldi, Chopin — that take full advantage of the Baroque space. A Foucault's pendulum hangs in the nave, swinging to demonstrate the Earth's rotation, which is either a statement about the church's relationship with science or just a very cool thing to put in a church.