Toruń's New Town — a market square set on the diagonal and a basilica with flying buttresses

Two towns, one Toruń

The New Town was chartered in 1264 immediately beside the older Old Town, and it was a full municipality in its own right — its own council, its own market and its own coat of arms, showing a watchtower between two shields of the Teutonic Order. It covered less ground than the Old Town, and that difference in scale is still legible.

The more important difference was not size. The New Town had no access to the Vistula, and therefore no share in the long-distance trade that made the Old Town's merchants rich. It grew instead as a town of craftsmen, which shows in the buildings: the houses round its square are plainer than their Old Town counterparts.

In 1454 the two towns were merged, under Old Town authority. The New Town hall lost its purpose overnight, became a secondary office and eventually a warehouse. The name, by contrast, has outlasted the charter by more than seven and a half centuries.

Rynek Nowomiejski, set on the diagonal

The square was laid out with the town in 1264. It is a square of roughly 95 by 95 metres, though the house frontages themselves run only about seventy metres each — and that is the key to its plan. From every corner two streets leave at right angles, continuing the lines of the frontages, which gives eight exits rather than four.

The second peculiarity is obvious the moment you walk in: the sides of the square sit diagonally to the compass. The street grid is otherwise regular and chequerboard; the exception is ulica Wielkie Garbary, irregular because it was built up before the plan existed.

Little medieval fabric survives. Fires in 1413 and 1455, the Teutonic wars of the 15th century and later Swedish and Napoleonic destruction took most of it, so the houses standing today are largely the result of early modern and 19th-century rebuilding.

A town hall that became a church

From the early 14th century the middle of the square was occupied by the New Town hall, holding the council chamber, the bench court, the chancery, a cloth hall and bread stalls, with a beer cellar and a prison below. Those cellars are the only surviving interior of the Gothic building.

After 1454 it slipped steadily down the hierarchy until 1668 brought it an entirely new job: the New Town Protestant congregation, which had just lost the church of St James, adapted it as the church of the Holy Trinity. The Gothic town hall served as a church until the early 19th century.

Its condition then forced a replacement. In 1824 a neo-Romanesque church designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel was completed on the site. It served Protestants until 1918, was the Orthodox parish church of Toruń from 1927 to 1939, and today houses a cultural foundation — still in the middle of the square, at Rynek Nowomiejski 28.

St James: flying buttresses in Chełmno Land

The parish church stands at the eastern corner of the square. Bishop Herman laid the foundation stone in 1309, and work on the chancel began the same year; it was usable by about 1320, and by roughly 1340 the body of the church stood as a three-aisled basilica — an unusual choice in this region.

A basilican section means carrying the vault thrust of the nave outwards, so, following western cathedrals, the builders used flying buttresses. From 1359 onwards side chapels were added and the aisle roofs raised, which buried the buttresses beneath them; the elevation still shows where they run. The tower's distinctive double roof dates from after the fire of 1455.

Two details are worth hunting for on site. The chancel is not strictly oriented but turned to the north-east so the church would fit the street grid, and along its edges green and yellow glazed bricks alternate with the red brickwork. The church is 53 metres long and the tower 49 metres high.

Inside — and what is missing

From the Gothic period come a 14th-century crucifix in the form of a tree of life, brought here from the demolished Dominican church of St Nicholas, 14th-century wall paintings beneath the tower and in the chancel, a figure of the Virgin and Child from the late 1300s, and a Passion painting of about 1480–1490 whose twenty-two scenes run across one continuous landscape. A black crucifix of the early 15th century drew particular devotion.

The Protestant centuries left a richly carved organ case of 1611, one of the oldest in Poland, and a Last Judgment of 1603 from the Gdańsk workshop of Anton Möller. Most of the altars and the pulpit of 1770 are 18th century; a Crucifixion by Bartholomäus Strobel of 1634 hangs in one of the side chapels, and the neo-Gothic chancel windows were made in 1913–1914 by the Franz Binsfeld firm of Trier.

Then there is what is not here. In 1703, during the Great Northern War, Swedish troops carried off the two largest bells. One of them hangs in Uppsala cathedral, where it is the largest surviving medieval bell in Sweden. The church changed denomination twice: Protestants used it from 1557, and Benedictine nuns took it back in 1667. Since 2021 it has held the rank of a sanctuary on the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela.

Getting there and practicalities

• On foot from the Old Town — a few minutes from the Old Town square along Szeroka and Królowej Jadwigi; the boundary between the two medieval towns ran along this line
• By train — from Toruń Główny take city transport across the Vistula; Toruń Miasto station is within walking distance
• By car — the centre lies inside the paid parking zone, so it is easier to park at the edge of the old town and walk
• Combine it with — the Old Town square and town hall, the Leaning Tower, the city walls and the riverside boulevard, plus the Teutonic castle ruins between the two districts
• Time needed — one and a half to two hours for the square, the church and the surroundings
• Worth knowing — St James is a working church and, since 2021, a sanctuary, so access depends on the pattern of services

How to get there and practical info

Location

Toruń, New Town — east of the Old Town, centred on Rynek Nowomiejski

Chartered

1264, as a separate town beside the Old Town

Merged with the Old Town

1454, under Old Town authority

The square

about 95 by 95 metres, frontages of roughly 70 metres, sides set diagonally to the compass, eight street exits

Church of St James

foundation stone 1309, body completed about 1340; three-aisled basilica with flying buttresses; 53 metres long, tower 49 metres

Former Protestant church

Rynek Nowomiejski 28 — a neo-Romanesque building to Karl Friedrich Schinkel's design, completed 1824, on the site of the Gothic New Town hall

Protection

Old and New Town in the register of monuments since 29 December 1952; the square's frontages since 14 April 1961; Monument of History since 16 September 1994; medieval Toruń on the UNESCO list since 1997

Time needed

1.5 to 2 hours

Current hours and tickets

oficjalny portal miasta Torunia

When to go