Reconstruction of the façade and tower of the church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Kostomłoty according to the design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel against the background of his other projects as an example of the reconstruction of a Baroque ch

Kostomłoty is currently a small village in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship near Wrocław. The most valuable monument of the settlement is the parish church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, located in the centre on the western side of the market square. Due to the sparse iconographic materials of the church from before 1900 and the lack of extensive research, it is difficult to determine the exact changes that took place in the building. The Gothic structure of the church was erected in the mid-14th century. In the mid-16th century, it was renovated and expanded with a Renaissance porch. In the Baroque period, the tower received a new spire. A query in foreign archives conducted by the authors revealed a plan for the reconstruction of the church from 1818, signed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. In 1818–1819, based on the design of Schinkel, a new tower with staircase annexes was built on the foundations of the old one in the spirit of Neo-Gothic, creating a kind of westerwork. A detailed comparative analysis of the design and iconography of the historical tower from 1898–1909 shows that this project was almost entirely completed. Schinkel’s designs for the reconstruction of existing buildings received significantly less attention than his designs for new buildings. This work, as a contribution to the topic, sheds some light on the project of the Neo-Gothic reconstruction of the baroque church and its implementation in the context of other Neo-Gothic tower masses designed by the same architect.