Ląd

Ląd lies beside the Warta, west of Konin, where a Cistercian abbey rose near an old Piast stronghold. Founded in the twelfth century, the monastery became a substantial religious house in Greater Poland. Its medieval buildings were enlarged in the fourteenth century, and their surviving Gothic fabric includes richly decorated interiors. Its quiet riverside setting placed the community away from the bustle of towns.

In 1651 Abbot Jan Zapolski began rebuilding the abbey church in the Baroque style. The Roman architect Pompeo Ferrari later designed its central section and high dome, completed in the 1730s. These works gave the old monastery a striking new appearance, but its long life as a Cistercian house ended in 1819, when the authorities dissolved the abbey.