The city’s Roman Catholic Cathedral is the biggest church in Łódź. A true Gothic masterpiece it was built between 1901 and 1912 by the famous Łódź builders Wende & Zarske from original drawings supposedly supplied by the Berlin architect, Emil Zillmann. Styled along the lines of a typical medieval cathedral with three aisles, transept, choir, ambulatory and Lady Chapel, the interior is famous for being rather severe. Damaged by a fire in 1971, the cathedral has been painstakingly restored including the addition of a new roof supported by modern steel trusses. On the Chancery's side find a small Cenotaph dedicated to the Unknown Soldier, and on the opposite side a monument to Father Skorupka, a Roman Catholic priest who is believed to have made a great contribution to the country’s victory over the Bolsheviks in 1920.

Church of the Assumption of Our Blessed Mary was built to replace St Joseph’s on Kościelny Square between 1888-97, this vast neo-Gothic red brick beauty features some remarkable altars including the superb main altar that includes a triptych of Ascension of the Blessed Virgin Mary dating from 1655, and some of the loveliest examples of stained glass in Poland. The famous Auschwitz nurse Stanisława Leszczynska is buried here in the crypt, and at the back find the tomb of a certain Mr Wyszynski, dated 1822 and the only thing left from the oldest cemetery in Łódź.

One of two Orthodox churches in the city, the domed neo-Byzantine St. Alexander Nevsky is the most interesting of the pair and serves as an official cathedral of the Łódź-Poznań Bishop. Said to have been designed by the official city architect Hilary Majewski between 1881 and 1884 as a gift from Łódź’s industrialists to the Orthodox community, the church has many ornate elevations and a breathtakingly rich interior featuring iconostasis made in St. Petersburg. If you happen to come in the evening for a mass, you will hear wonderful singing of the choir and Old Slavonic words of prayers, which take your thoughts to distant Eastern regions of Europe.

St. Joseph's Church was from larch wood. This diminutive church close to the new Manufaktura centre was built between 1765-68 and was originally situated in Kościelny Square. Moved piece by piece overnight by local factory workers to its present location in 1888, the oldest and most humble house of worship in the city possesses just one nave, a shingle roof and a tiny steeple. Of particular interest inside is the neo-Baroque main altar, paid for somewhat surprisingly by the Jewish factory owner Israel Poznanski. The free-standing bell tower, depending on whom you wish to believe, either dates from the 18th century, and along with the church is the only pre-19th century building in the city, or was built from concrete in 1922. If the latter, then it’s since been clad in wood, and we’d be delighted to know the truth about it as much as you.

St. Olga Orthodox Church [Cerkiew Św. Olgi ] is the second Orthodox church in Łódź. It might lack the dazzle of its counterpart on Kilińskiego but is still a worthwhile detour for fans of ecclesiastical architecture. Designed by Francizek Chełmiński the single nave chapel was consecrated in 1898, two years after the next door orphanage for orthodox children was completed.

The interwar period enriched Łódź with many architecturally precious structures. However, they had been erected primarily on the outskirts of the city, which made them visible in the city skyline, conversely to the places of worship built before World War I. The last stage of the church construction in Łódź covers the years after World War II, which is a long period, lasting almost sixty years. We can distinguish several periods in this time. The first years after the war were dedicated to completion of several structures, which con¬struction started before 1939; just to mention that a steeple was added to the Church of Our Lady of Victory, among other things. Construction had also started on the new St. Anthony's Church in Żubardź, on the site on an unfinished structure, which was pulled down by the German occupiers. The new building was constructed on the saved foundation. Before the Stalinist system started ruling in Poland for good, the local Catholics managed to start construction of St. Tere-a's Church in 1950. The Stalinist period was not conducive to building new places of wor¬ship. Construction works on St. Teresa's Church were stopped, a steeple at St. Anthony's Church was not allowed to be finished and it was forbidden to place a statue of St. Mary at the steeple of the Church of Our Lady of Victory. The post-October "thaw" of 1956 allowed for restoration of works at St. Teresa's Church, which had continued until the mid-1960s.

It has become the most beautiful church built during the postwar years. However, the communist authorities were not eager to allow construction of new churches in the working-class, "red" Łódź. This period of politically forced slowdown in sacred construction lasted until the beginning of the 1970s. Development of many new, huge residential districts, deprived of places of worship, combined with the pressure of the local residents, forced the authorities to make some concessions. During that time the first building permit for church construc¬tion had been issued after a very long time. It was granted to the Church of the Passionist Fathers in Teofilów. This structure started a new era in the history of sacred architecture in the city, introducing new solutions, characteristic of searches related to church construction after the Se¬cond Vatican Council. However, construction of a larger number of new places of worship was only possible at a period between the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties, during the eclipse of the com¬munist system and the birth of the "Solidarity" movement.

Great needs and continually low number of issued church building permits led to de¬velopment of large, two-story structures that in combination with associating buildings created expanded parish centers. Some of the best examples of this trend include the Sacred Heart Church in Retkinia and St. Maximilian Kolbe Church in Dąbrowa. Significant changes can be noticed in a period between the end of the eighties and the early nineties, which was concurrent with the fall of the communism in our country and the years of the 3rd Republic of Poland. It initiated a period during which there have been no obstacles in meeting pastoral needs of the local population, primarily residents of huge housing estates on the outskirts of Łódź. It resulted in development of many church construction projects. It also meant departure from huge structures and building of smaller, cozier churches serving local communities. It has been a period of a great diversity of used forms, typical of the architecture of late Modernism and Postmodernism.