St Anne's Church in Vilnius is a unique building. Among other monuments of the city's sacral architecture, it stands out not only for its medieval origins, but also for the uniqueness of the style in which it was built. It is the finest example of late Gothic architecture, known as flamboyant Gothic, in the former Republic of Poland. The flowing forms characteristic of this style, reminiscent of tongues of fire, were creatively adapted to the possibilities of brick material in the case of the Vilnius temple.

St Anne's Church, together with the neighbouring church and the Bernardine Monastery, forms a coherent complex. Of these buildings, however, it attracts the most attention. The body of the church is impressive with its multi-faceted façade crowned by two openwork towers. Above the simple porch, open with only three arcades, rises a complex architectural composition. The main role in it is played by a sharp arch motif in the form of a donkey's back, interspersed with rectangular window niches. Slender polygonal pillars and pinnacles also appear. All these elements are made of hand-moulded bricks in as many as 33 different shapes.

The light and harmonious decorative forms of St Anne's Church are reminiscent of a work not of architecture, but rather of architectural craftsmanship. This impression was aptly expressed by J.I. Kraszewski, who was fascinated by the building. He compared the temple to a Gothic monstrance: "[...] small and tiny, it is a bizarre object, as if it were one of those gothic monstrances, made of turrets, rods and golden threads, which we can still find in some old churches".

Attempts to establish the founder and author of the temple project
The founder of St Anne's Church and the author of its architectural design has not yet been identified. According to 19th century historians, Vytautas the Grand Duke of Lithuania and his wife Anna were supposed to be responsible for the construction of the temple. This opinion was also repeated in later publications from the beginning of the last century. At the same time, it competed with a new theory that the church was built on the initiative of King Sigismund Augustus and was intended as a mausoleum for his wives - Elisabeth of Austria and Barbara Radziwillowna. Earlier inaccuracies and contradictory information in the reconstruction of the church's history resulted from the fact that in the 16th century there were not one, but two or even three churches dedicated to St Anne in Vilnius - one within the castle walls and two in the city.

Similarly, the issue of establishing the identity of the builder of the building is unclear. Most researchers believe that the author of the project is Michal Enkinger, a native of Gdansk, the builder of, among others, the Church of St Francis and St Bernard, which is adjacent to St Anne's Church, or the House of Perkun in Kaunas. While such an attribution seems as likely as possible, from time to time there will be voices rejecting it and pointing to other candidates. Among them was the court architect of Vladislav Jagiellon, Benedict Rejt, who came from Prague and was the author of the Vladislav Hall in Hradčany. So far, none of the above has been conclusively proven and the question of identifying the author of the church's architectural design requires further in-depth research.

History of the church
For some time in the 16th century, St Anne's Church was in the hands of Protestants. In 1581, after reconstruction was completed following the fires that consumed it in the 1560s, it was handed over to the monks of the nearby Bernardine monastery. At the beginning of the 17th century, a sacristy and a gallery connecting the two buildings were added to the north wall of the presbytery.

St Anne's Church suffered another fire in 1794, which resulted in cracks and fissures in the vaulting, south wall and façade. These were repaired temporarily by replacing the iron reinforcements according to a design by architect Michal Szulc. At that time, the two side entrances to the church were also bricked up, and the cracks in the interior and exterior were covered with plaster (the exterior plaster was removed from the church during the renovation in 1855-1858). In 1872, a neo-Gothic bell tower designed by Russian architect Nikolai Chagin was built in front of the church. A wall with a gate leading into the courtyard of the neighbouring Bernardine church stretches between it and the church.

Neo-Gothic interior
While the exterior of St Anne's Church has not been significantly transformed over the centuries and gives a good idea of the original shape of the temple, its interior is mostly a creation of the early 20th century. It was created in the course of a comprehensive renovation of the church carried out in 1902-1909 in cooperation with specialists from Vilnius, Krakow and Warsaw.

Due to the catastrophic technical condition of the building, a committee was formed in 1902 to collect funds and determine the direction of its restoration. The first chairman of the committee was Vilnius provincial marshal Adam Count Broel-Plater. The Warsaw architect Jozef Piotr Dziekoński was appointed to head the restoration project. He was assisted in the scientific development of the direction by Slawomir Odrzywolski, conservator of Gothic monuments from Krakow. A group of local engineers and architects were involved in the technical work to strengthen the church structure: A. Antonovich, M. Hattowski, K. Falewicz and K. Girdwainis.

Although the work was carried out in accordance with the scientific principles of conservation in force at the time and in such a way "that the original shape of the building was not altered in any way, while traces of clumsy and incompatible with the Gothic style restorations could be removed", it was assessed negatively in many respects. Among other things, the construction of a new vault over the nave was questionable (St Anne's Church was originally built without one, and the existing ones were supposed to have a negative impact on the strength of the building). The vaulting over the choir and chancel was dismantled and closely reconstructed, while that over the nave was replaced by a new one designed by Dziekoński. The work also included: laying foundations, thickening walls and reinforcing the entire structure with a system of iron fastenings. The bricked-up side portals in the façade were restored and a new external door, which had been forged in Warsaw in 1908, was funded. The exterior of the church was painted with bright red paint, which fortunately has faded to this day, making the natural colour of the bricks visible. It was also at this time that most of the church furnishings were created: the organ prospectus, pulpit and confessionals. Of the earlier furnishings, the three Baroque altars (the main altar with the painting of St Anne of Samothrace and the two side altars), designed in 1747 by the architect Johann Christopher Glaubitz, are particularly valuable.