Our Lady Queen of Poland Church

This guide tells how a church came to stand in Nowa Huta, a model socialist town built from scratch around a steelworks with no house of worship in its plans. It follows the 1960 standoff when a militia truck arrived to remove a cross local families had planted in protest, and the young priest, later Pope John Paul the Second, who stood with his parishioners through the fight. Permission finally came in 1965, and residents with no state materials hauled roughly two million stones by hand from mountain rivers to raise the walls themselves. Look up at the shape of the building as you listen, said to resemble Noah's ark run aground.