Saint Andrew's is among the very few Romanesque buildings still legible in Krakow. Raised in the late eleventh century on what is now Grodzka Street, it was designed as much for shelter as for worship: heavy limestone walls, slit openings set high above the ground, and two octagonal towers that give it the profile of a small fortress. Tradition holds that the townspeople took refuge behind those walls during the Mongol raids that devastated the region in the thirteenth century, and the building's survival amid a city repeatedly burned lends the story credibility. Its interior tells a different story altogether: in the Baroque period the Romanesque shell was fitted out with stucco, gilding, painted vaults and a decorative scheme belonging to the convent of Poor Clares who have occupied the adjoining buildings for centuries. That collision of periods, defensive austerity outside, ornament within, is the subject of the programme. The church lies inside Krakow's UNESCO-listed historic centre.
