Surroundings of the Church of St. Brand
In front of the church of St.. The brand is bursting with neo-renaissance the building of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences with 1864 r. (nr 17). The building was being built for AU and is now owned by AU again, The PAN only rents out certain rooms.
It stands closer to the Market Square Tarnowski Palace from the 17th century. (nr 13 – 15) a pod nr. 5 Grand Hotel, in whose interiors the action of Henryk Worcell's book Zaklęte rewiry takes place (on the basis of which a film of the same title was made here).
Turning west from Szczepańska into ul. st. Brand, you can walk to ul. Reformed, where silent stands out of the way, nostalgic church of st. Kazimierz with the adjacent Reformed Monastery. The temple was built in 1673 r. especially for reformates. Since then, the microclimatic properties of the building's underground have been known, thanks to which the corpses placed in the crypts undergo spontaneous mummification. Over a thousand dead are buried here, not only monks, but also lay people. The remains of Father Sebastian Wolicki lying in a glass coffin are greatly revered – a saintly reformer who was once respected by Cracovians. Another curiosity of this quiet place is the Way of the Cross in the garden on the other side of the street, consisting of fourteen chapels, in which there are paintings by Michał Stachowicz behind wooden doors and behind glass, wyobrażające stacje Męki Pańskiej. The interior of the church is baroque in the eighteenth century, a sweet and kitschy character. On the right side of the entrance there is a chapel of the Merciful Lord Jesus from the beginning of the 20th century. In the altar located in it, the miraculous image of Christ rising from the tomb is protected behind a massive glass (so-called. Christ in the well). It is worth paying attention to the huge number of votive offerings, among which there were also old crutches once used by disabled people, probably healed by the miraculous power of the image.
The monastic tradition preaches, that this very Christ during the plague of years 1707-1709, praying with the religious, at one point he uttered a word “enough” and then the plague ceased.
