Święta Katarzyna (, "Saint Catherine"; german: Kattern) is a village in Gmina Siechnice,

Wrocław County __NOTOC__ Wrocław County ( pl, powiat wrocławski) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Lower Silesian Voivodeship, south-western Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local go ...

, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. Before 1 January 2010, the district of Gmina Siechnice was called ''Gmina Święta Katarzyna'', and Święta Katarzyna was its seat. (This was one of only two cases in Poland where a gmina contained a town but had its administrative seat in a village; the remaining one is

Gmina Nowe Skalmierzyce __NOTOC__ Gmina Nowe Skalmierzyce is an urban-rural gmina (administrative district) in Ostrów Wielkopolski County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. In 1999 the administrative seat of the gmina was moved from the town of Nowe Sk ...

.) The village had a population of 1,872 in 2006, rising to 2258 in 2015. It lies approximately south-east of the regional capital

Wrocław Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...

. It first appears in written records in 1257 as Santa Katherine. Prior to 1945 the area was part of

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. Buildings of interest include the fortified church of Saint Catherine, which dates to at least 1257, and has been rebuilt on several occasions, including in 1720 and after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. The church contains a picture of the Madonna of Częstochowa, and is considered a

Marian shrine A shrine to the Virgin Mary (or Marian shrine) is a shrine marking an apparition or other miracle ascribed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, or a site on which is centered a historically strong Marian devotion. Such locales are often the destinatio ...

. The

eastern bypass runs through Święta Katarzyna, improving the village's transport links with the city.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swieta Katarzyna Villages in Wrocław County Shrines to the Virgin Mary