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The Cathedral of Przemyśl is the main church of the Archdiocese of Przemyśl, located at the Cathedral Square in the Old Town. The first cathedral of the Diocese was a wooden church which existed from 1375 to 1412, standing in the square beside the present church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. From 1412 - 1460 a Ruthenian Orthodox cathedral built of stone stood in the courtyard of Przemyśl Castle which it was strongly associated with.
Construction of the present cathedral in the Gothic style began with the Chapter of Bishop Nicholas Błażejowski in 1495. Only the walls and pillars remain from this building. The reconstruction was completed in the first decades of the sixteenth century. In 1578 the mayor of Przemysl, Secretary of the Crown - Jan Tomasz Drohojowski (d. 1605), founded the present chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. Founded on the site earlier rotunda St. Nicholas. Because of the continuous threat of incursions of the Tartars and Wallachians, it is a fortified church, surrounded by a wall and is equipped with a cannon. It is currently the seat of Archbishop Adam Szal.
In the chancel are the stone foundations of the late Romanesque rotunda of the first half of the thirteenth century cathedral. The seventeenth-century Gothic cathedral served the bishops of Przemysl to the beginning of the eighteenth century. Bishop Aleksander Antoni Fredro decided to rebuild in the Baroque style, these works were performed in the years 1724-1744. In the chancel of the Great Altar was placed huge baroque and new stalls. There are two domed chapels. One of them is Drohojowski chapel of 1578, and the other one is the late baroque Fredro chapel built in 1724.
In 1733 the roof collapsed, destroying part of church and was rebuilt afterwards and completed in 1744. At the turn of the 19th century there was another rebuilding, restoring the oldest parts of the church, in a Gothic style.
References:The Externsteine (Extern stones) is a distinctive sandstone rock formation located in the Teutoburg Forest, near the town of Horn-Bad Meinberg. The formation is a tor consisting of several tall, narrow columns of rock which rise abruptly from the surrounding wooded hills. Archaeological excavations have yielded some Upper Paleolithic stone tools dating to about 10,700 BC from 9,600 BC.
In a popular tradition going back to an idea proposed to Hermann Hamelmann in 1564, the Externsteine are identified as a sacred site of the pagan Saxons, and the location of the Irminsul (sacral pillar-like object in German paganism) idol reportedly destroyed by Charlemagne; there is however no archaeological evidence that would confirm the site's use during the relevant period.
The stones were used as the site of a hermitage in the Middle Ages, and by at least the high medieval period were the site of a Christian chapel. The Externsteine relief is a medieval depiction of the Descent from the Cross. It remains controversial whether the site was already used for Christian worship in the 8th to early 10th centuries.
The Externsteine gained prominence when Völkisch and nationalistic scholars took an interest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This interest peaked under the Nazi regime, when the Externsteine became a focus of nazi propaganda. Today, they remain a popular tourist destination and also continue to attract Neo-Pagans and Neo-Nazis.