Bringing the Dominican Order to Warka, the 13th century

Sources lead us to believe that the Dominican Order was brought to Warka by Siemowit I ca. 1255. It is also speculated that several years later, in 1321, Prince Trojden I relocated the complex.

A brick church was built on a hill in a place where, according to rumor, stood a castle. The following decades showed that Mazovian Princes provided for the Dominican Order and their needs. A document from 1321 has been preserved, in which a prominent Mazovian Prince Trojden I confirms his predecessors’ transfer of rights to a mill located on the Pilica River in the town of Warka and its donation to the Dominican Order.
One can therefore say that the Dominicans in Warka were in the Mazovian Princes’ good graces. No wonder that the Mazovian Princes, including Trojden I himself, found their final resting places in the underground crypts of the Dominican Church in Warka. The Dominicans were active in Warka for centuries to come, until the late 18th/early 19th centuries.

After the Order left town, the monastery building began to deteriorate, and was finally pulled down. The Mazovian Princes’ remains were solemnly transferred to the Franciscan Church underground crypts in 1859. The place once occupied by the monastery and church complex is now the location of the volunteer Fire Department.