The beginnings
Around the mid-14th C. king Kazimierz Wielki (Casimir III the Great) founded several churches in the region of Małopolska to take off a curse which had been cast on him after murdering a canon Marcin Baryczka. One of them is St. Ladislaus’s Church in Szydłów. It was built ca.1355 mostly from brick, with some architectural details made of sandstone. For centuries it has been several times rebuilt, but it  suffered the most in 1944, during WWII struggles. Fortunately, it was soon reconstructed and between 1957 and 1958 it regained its original Gothic character.

The inside
Nowadays, it is at two-nave hall temple with a two-bay presbytery (enclosed from three sides); from the north there is a Baroque chapel and a Gothic sacristy. Outside, the walls have been supported with buttresses and surrounded with plinth, crowning and draining cornices. The temple has high-pitched roof, but its main decoration is the Baroque turret with a lantern. Beneath, there is a recessed, ogival Gothic portal with metal fittings, resembling the Star of David. In comparison with the southern portal, which has been build over, it is definitely more impressive. The structure has ogival windows and its vaulting rests on two reconstructed octagonal pillars, yet the sacristy vaulting is purely Gothic. The rood-screen arcade has also an ogival shape. The furnishing seems quite modest, but it is historic and valuable. Inside, one should pay attention to a late-Renaissance altar from the 17th C. with a 14th C. figure of the Virgin Mary with the Child and St. John the Evangelist; Baroque paintings depicting St. Casimir and St. Florian; and a 19th-century image of the Virgin Mary with the Child. Next to the church there is also an interesting Gothic bell-tower, adapted from a former city tower, which was built in the late-14th C.

For years the tourists have been coming here to get to know the interesting history of this place and see the unique insides.