Set among Communist-era housing blocks, just north of Elbląg’s city center, the Church of Our Lady Queen of Poland (Parafia Matki Bożej Królowej Polski) makes a dramatic impression. With its dark façade and tall, jagged towers, the church looks less like a place of worship and more like the lair of an evil villain you might find in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, leading residents to jokingly refer to it as “Our Lady of Mordor.”

The ominous-looking chapel belongs to a larger wave of visually striking churches constructed across Poland during the 1970s and 1980s. These structures were often designed anonymously by architects working in their spare time and then built by the parishioners themselves in defiance of the (officially atheist) Communist regime.