Collegiate Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary Queen of the World

One of the most valuable monuments of Western Pomerania and one of the most magnificent Gothic churches in the Baltic Sea basin, influencing numerous buildings in the region.

Today’s church, located in the very centre of the medieval town, on the south-east side of the market square, was probably built on the site of an older church, since its construction is believed to have started in 1292, and already half a century earlier the church in Stargard appeared in the documents of the Bishop of Kamień Pomorski, to whom the town belonged at that time.

At the end of the 13th century, a towerless, three-nave, four-bay hall of the nave body with a three-bay closed chancel was erected. The western façade was crowned by a stepped gable with slender blends and a cross-shaped niche in the apex.

The shape of the church as we know it in the 21st century is probably due to Heinrich Brunsberg, the founder of the Pomeranian Gothic school of architecture, thanks to whom it was extended in the 14th-15th centuries.

It eventually took the form of a three-nave basilica with a polygonal closed presbytery with an ambulatory and a ring of chapels, a number of side chapels and a triforium gallery, as well as a new western façade, planned as a monumental twin-tower structure.