St. Charles Borromeo Church

The local parish is the fourth in a row (after the Church of the Virgin Mary in the New Town, St. John's Cathedral, and the Church of the Holy Cross) Catholic parish in Warsaw. Its first seat was St. Andrew's Church in the Theater Square, hence St. Andrew still remains its patron. After 1815, it was moved to the Church of St. Anthony of Padua on Senatorska Street, to finally find its seat in a new church built in the place of the existing one there in the years 1820-1840, Pod Lwem Square.

The church, funded by Princess Klementyna Sanguszko-Małachowska, the owner of Lubartów estates, who allocated PLN 200,000 for this purpose, was erected at the intersection of Chłodna and Elektoralna Streets on the territory of Pod Lwem Square, at the end of the Saxon Axis. The cornerstone was laid on August 18, 1841. After the death of the foundress in Paris on December 26, 1841, the construction work was temporarily interrupted. Then the government decided to allocate initially PLN 150,000 and again 117,738 groschen (in October 1847) for the construction.

The first parish priest was Rev. Tomasz Chmielewski, titular bishop of Gratianopolis and suffragan of the Archdiocese of Warsaw (he died during the construction of the church in July 1844). After his death, the parish was run by administrators. The first was Rev. Jakub Szarkiewicz, professor of the former capital university and theological academy, metropolitan canon, who also died during the construction (September 30, 1846). After him, the administrator became Rev. Marcin Zarzecki, and to him, in accordance with Roman ceremonial, Bishop Łubieński handed over the keys to the temple on the day of consecration.

The church, mentioned in 19th-century travel diaries (Chłodna Street was the main western exit artery of Warsaw), was restored in 1854, 1870, and 1886.

During the defense of Warsaw in September 1939, a makeshift cemetery was established near the church; the graves began to be removed on the orders of the German authorities in November 1939.

After the defeat of the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans blew up the presbytery and side chapels of the church. It was rebuilt after the war, the work was completed in 1956. In the presbytery, a 17th-century painting "Martyrdom of St. Andrew" by Silesian artist Michael Willmann was hung.

The temple was modeled after the Roman basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, and the interior after the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette church in Paris. It was built on the plan of a Latin cross; a three-nave church, with a flat coffered ceiling supported by Corinthian cast-iron columns and a presbytery closed with an apse. The invocation is presumably associated with the revival of the cult of St. Charles Borromeo during the reign of the Archbishop of Paris, Count de Quélen, who during the Bourbon restoration popularized early Christian architecture and monarchist ideas (followed by a member of the church's construction committee, Bishop Tadeusz Łubieński).

The facade, flanked by two towers, is preceded by a three-arched vestibule. On the facade, figures of the apostles Peter and Paul are placed. It is crowned with a pediment with a tympanum, depicting the patron of the church - Charles Borromeo, administering the sacrament of Communion to the inhabitants of Milan during the plague epidemic in 1567. The stairs in front of the main entrance (from the west side) are decorated with sculptures by Ludwik Kauffmann and Paweł Maliński, made between 1841-1849 and depicting the Church Fathers: St. Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory and Jerome, and the apostles Peter and Paul. Kauffmann was also the author of the bas-relief adorning the building's pediment.

In the side facades of the temple, external niches with statues of Polish and foreign saints and blessed are placed (including Bl. Wincenty Kadłubek, Bl. Salomea Piast, St. Stanisław Kostka, St. Szymon from Lipnica, St. Hedwig of Silesia, St. John Cantius, St. Adalbert and St. Stanislaus, as well as St. Florian, St. Roch and St. Barbara), being the sculptural works of Teofil Gadecki, Tadeusz Czajkowski executed under the direction of J. Szarkiewicz (recut in 1967).

In 1890, in front of the main entrance, a bronze statue of Our Lady of Grace was placed, funded by Salomea Lentzka and made according to a design by Andrzej Pruszyński.