Kostel svaté Anny (Rychvald) Church

The Church of St Anne is the church of the Roman Catholic parish of Rychvald u Karviné. It stands in Rychvald in the Karviná district, in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia. Together with the château it is one of the town's two cultural monuments and, according to the town's website, its second-oldest building.

Bernard Barský's Protestant church

The local parish is recorded in 1390, and in a register of 1447 it is listed among the parishes of the Cieszyn deanery. The original wooden church was destroyed in 1535 by a great fire in Rychvald. The new masonry church was built on a different site by the Protestant lord of Rychvald, Bernard Barský z Baště, who also built the château in Rychvald. Sources give both 1595 and 1596; the year 1596 appears on a boss of the vault. The builder was probably the Italian-speaking master builder Bernard Leo from Locarno. By tradition, material from the demolished Benedictine monastery in Orlová was used in its construction, as it was for the château.

From Protestants to Catholics

After the Battle of White Mountain, re-Catholicisation began and the church passed to the Catholics. Exactly when is not known; according to the town's website it reportedly happened under the owner Jan z Vrbna. After the Thirty Years' War the church was damaged and remained unused for a long time. In 1759 it was consecrated by Bishop Philipp Gotthard Schaffgotsch.

Late Gothic at the end of the 16th century

The church has a single nave with a polygonal apse and a massive square (four-sided) tower on the west front. The nave has a Gothic rib vault with decorated bosses. They bear the year 1596, the monogram B. B. Z. B. and the coat of arms of Bernard Barský z Baště. The bosses in the chancel are decorated with the coats of arms of Bernard z Baště and his wife. The slender windows end in pointed arches with simple trefoil tracery. The town's website speaks of late Gothic elements and later Neo-Gothic alterations. Above the side entrance, on the outside, is a stone lintel with the same relief as above the entrance to the château.

Bells, cemetery and repairs

The original bells were requisitioned for war purposes during the First World War. The new bells of the inter-war period, whose patroness was Franziska Starhemberg, met the same fate in the Second World War. Today the church has one bell in the tower and a death knell bell. The Neo-Gothic altar dates from 1895. The area around the church served as a cemetery until 1908. During the German occupation the low stone wall around it was pulled down and the remains of the cemetery were cleared. In 2012 the church underwent a major repair costing 5.8 million crowns from the EU Regional Operational Programme, which included a dendrological survey of the roof trusses and a rescue archaeological survey. Below the church stands a memorial to the soldiers who fell in the First World War.