Asked to name any of Stanisław Moniuszko's pieces, most people would instantly cite Halka and The Haunted Manor. After a moment's thought, some might also add that he wrote many songs which he then published in Songbooks for Home Use. Let’s not forget, however, that Moniuszko's output also includes operettas, ballet music, cantatas and sacred music, including some masses. He was a man of faith. He started each day by attending the mass. This is how his first biographer, Aleksander Walicki, described Moniuszko's daily routine: ‘He would get up very early, that is at five o’clock, or even earlier if it was the summer, and was off to the mass right away. The only times he diverged from the habit was when he was ill. Having returned from church, he sat down to work: most of his pieces were brought into being at this time of day.’ Writing religious music was for the composer a very personal, spiritual experience.

Moniuszko usually frequented the church of the of the Visitation Sisters on Krakowskie Przedmieście. On 19 May 1872, the Pentecost, probably with the composer in attendance, the shrine saw the premiere of Moniuszko’s Piotrowin Mass (Msza Piotrowińska), the last piece he wrote before his untimely death. This mass for four-part chorus of mixed voices and organ saw the light of day in April 1872 after, as researchers claim, only four days of work. Importantly, it has a Polish text: religious poems by Justyn Wojewódzki.

The church and convent was built for nuns of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary brought to Warsaw in 1654 by Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga. The shrine owes its current shape and form to Elżbieta Helena Sieniawska, who commissioned Karol Bay, a prominent Italian architect based in Poland, to design it around 1727. The construction was completed in 1761. The end result is a church with one three-bay nave surrounded by two rows of side chapels. Its dynamic, wavy facade is the church’s most characteristic feature. Above the main entrance you can see the emblem of the Order: a heart pierced by two arrows topped with a cross and surrounded by a crown of thorns. The plasterwork inside the shrine and the superb pulpit in the shape of the bow of Saint Peter’s boat were made by the phenomenal workshop of Jan Jerzy Plersch, while the painting of the Visitation was painted by Tadeusz Kuntze-Konicz, one of Poland’s best 18th-century painters. Another composer with links to the church is Fryderyk Chopin, who played its organ during Sunday services for students of the Warsaw Lycée, which he attended from 1825 to 1826. The church was also where the funeral of Maria Kalergis was held. The pianist was an ardent admirer of Moniuszko, whom she often supported financially. (Incidentally, she was also the object of the unrequited love of the poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid.) Moniuszko’s funeral mass was performed at the service. Inside the shrine you can see statues of other famous Poles: Tadeusz Czacki and Kazimierz Brodziński, Adam Mickiewicz’s teacher. By the main entrance you will spot a memorial for Fr. Jan Twardowski (1915–2006), a kneeler engraved with the last poem by this priest-poet.

The church of the Visitation Sisters is one of very few buildings in Warsaw that were not destroyed in the course of World War II. The 1939 air raids damaged one of the building’s corners and one chapel but the church came through the Warsaw Uprising almost unscathed. With its exquisitely sculptured facade, the shrine is one of the most beautiful buildings in Warsaw and a gem of baroque sacred architecture in Poland.