Altar of Our Lady of the Angels

A Franciscan Foundation on the Dunajec

In 1621, Zygmunt Tarło, castellan of Sącz, petitioned Rome for permission to bring the Reformed Franciscans to Poland and offered to found their monastery in Zakliczyn nad Dunajcem. The friars arrived on 19 June 1622, and by 1654 Tarło's son had funded a brick church and cloister, consecrated that year by Bishop Wojciech Lipnicki.

A Baroque Sanctuary

Inside, an illuminated statue of the Virgin Mary honors the church's dedication to Our Lady of the Angels, set beside a gilded frame holding a devotional painting of a kneeling friar. Carved wooden pews, a prayer bench and side altars complete the Baroque interior, expanded through the 18th century with a walled enclosure and new monastic cells.

A Place of Wartime Refuge

During the Second World War, the monastery's secluded position made it a hiding place for weapons and for Jews, Home Army soldiers and even a British paratrooper sheltering from occupying forces — a chapter of quiet courage still remembered by the community today.

A Living Novitiate

Since 1991 the cloister has housed the novitiate of the Franciscan Province of Our Lady of the Angels, continuing a life of prayer in the rolling countryside of Tarnów County, in Poland's Lesser Poland Voivodeship.