After visiting the theatre we go to Głęboka street again, and, heading up, we reach Plac Św. Krzyża (the Square of the Holy Cross) where we find The Parish Church (post Dominican) under the invocation of St. Maria Magdalene (Świętego Krzyża Square)

In the second half of the 13th century, with the Piast foundation, a Gothic church and a monastery of Dominican friars came into being inside the city walls. The first invocation was the Birth of the Holy Virgin. In 1290, when the Duchy of Cieszyn came into being, the church became a place of burial for the princely family. The carved tombstone of Prince Przemysław I Noszak, made in the Peter Parler workshop in Prague, is what survived from the Piast necropolis. Also, relics of Gothic architecture in the forms of window tracery, ogival portals and responds wound with banderoles survived.

In the great fire of Cieszyn in 1789 the church was damaged badly, just like the municipal parish church under the invocation of St. Maria Magdalene that was located in the present Plac Teatralny (Theatre Square). The latter was pulled down due to the damage that was too great, whereas the decision was made to rebuild the post- Dominican church. Then, too, it took over the invocation of St. Maria Magdalene and for many years it was the only municipal parish church that remained. The place of worship, being under the patronage of the Cieszyn dukes, was still remembered by them. This time, however, it was the Archduchess Marie Christine and her husband Albert of Saxe- Teschen who looked after the burnt and damaged church. During the reconstruction of the church, carried out according to the design of the Director of the Building Office for Moravia and Silesia in Brno, Karol Jacobie d’Ekholm, the Gothic walls of the main nave, transepts, sacristy and the side chapels were preserved. Because during the fire all the ogival vaults had collapsed, in 1793 they were lowered and replaced with cross and sail vaults that rested on buttresses.

This erased entirely the Gothic character of the building. In 1796, above the main entrance, Józef Drachny, duke Albert’s architect, erected a four-storey, late baroque tower – belfry, embellished with pillars and pilasters and a pyramid-shaped helmet. Also the interior received late baroque costume through the introduction of tall Tuscan pilasters supporting buttresses of the vault in the nave and, above all, due to the new main altar, pulpit and baptismal font, all of which were funded by the Dukal couple. In 1792 Franciszek Schubert from Opava carved an attractive, late baroque pulpit and a corresponding baptismal font. It is crowned with the scene ‘The baptism of Christ in the Jordan’ against a background of a drapery supported by an angel, with God the Father in the coping. The pulpit and the font were placed at the entrance of the old presbytery, on both sides, thus constituting the visual setting for the main altar. The altar was made in 1794 by a well-known wood-carver Andrzej Kasper Schweigel from Brno. It was a pillar altar with the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul and a symbol of Providence, among angels and in the glory, at the top. Room was found there for an oil painting by a well-known Austrian painter, Martin Johann ‘Kremser’ Schmidt, representing ‘The washing of the feet by St. Maria Magdalene’, dating from the turn of the 19th cent. On the altar mensa there is a tabernacle (late classicist) with adoring angels. Inside the tabernacle the miraculous painting of Our Lady of Cieszyn is placed. Apart from the interior design the Archduchess and her husband also donated richly decorated chasubles and precious liturgical vessels.