A reinforced concrete basilica from 1934-1935 designed by Karl Mayr, with a ship-like form, in the Zatorze district of Gliwice.
The Church of Christ the King is a Roman Catholic parish church in the Zatorze district of Gliwice, belonging to the Gliwice-Sośnica deanery of the Gliwice diocese. It was built in the 1930s to a design by Karl Mayr, and its reinforced concrete frame and ship-like form distinguish it among Gliwice's churches.
Efforts to build a church were begun in 1929, but the first designs by Dominikus Böhm proved too expensive.
The matter was returned to in 1934 and Paul Keller and Karl Mayr were invited to prepare designs. Mayr's design was chosen. The building site was blessed on 2 August 1934 by the parish priest of the Holy Family parish, Fr Brunon Pattas, and on 23 April 1935 the shell construction was completed. The church was blessed on 3 November 1935 by Cardinal Adolf Bertram, who on that day also established the new parish. The dedication to Christ the King was then among the first in the Diocese of Wrocław of that time.
The church is a three-aisled basilica on an elongated rectangular plan, built on a reinforced concrete frame, with a flat ceiling over the interior.
According to the designer, the form was to symbolise an ark-ship that carries the faithful across the sea of life to the Father's house. The façade is formed by a massive tower. Mayr planned it at 60 metres, but to save money it was built only to the height of the nave, and the money saved was spent on the presbytery. A wooden superstructure in the Bauhaus style was built on the tower. In 2019 it was replaced with a brick one to a design by Robert Krawczyk, and the tower reached 45.30 m.
The interior is decorated with stained glass and polychromy from different periods.
In the round windows of the church there are stained-glass windows from the Franz Mayer workshop in Munich to a design by Josef Eberz, four of which have survived to this day, with half-length figures of saints with their attributes. The ornamental stained glass in the upper parts of the nave walls from 1943 was made by the August Wagner workshop in Berlin. In 1938 the painter Karl Platzek decorated the chancel with a fresco of Christ the King with the German inscription “My kingdom is not of this world”. After the war the painting was painted over, and it was uncovered in 1973 during renovation. The renovation of 2015-2016 brought new polychromy and a new arrangement of the chancel to a design by Szymon Prandzioch, and on 25 June 2016 the bishop blessed the new altar and the image of Christ the King on the chancel wall.
From 1981 to 1994 the church hosted the annual national Religious Song Festival “Cantate Deo”.
It is about 1.4 km in a straight line from the church to the Gliwice Radio Tower.
Not far away, about 1.7 km, lies also Fryderyk Chopin Park, and about a kilometre from the church stands the Gliwice Steelworks.
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