Situated on the premises of the Catholic University, the Church of the Holy Cross, known as the academic church, was built in the 15th c. Legend has it that one night Henryk, a merchant from Gdańsk, attempted to steal the fragment of the True Cross enshrined in the Dominican church but when he wanted to sneak out of the city the oxen stopped and refused to pull the cart. Terrified, he returned to the church, gave back the stolen relic and founded a wooden church in the place where the miraculous incident happened. Later the church was rebuilt in brick in the Lublin Renaissance style. At the end of the 17th c. the temple belonged to St. Louis Bertrand’s Dominican Order, who also built a monastery nearby. In the 19th c. the monastery was used as an army storehouse and gradually fell into ruin. In the interwar period the whole complex was renovated and adapted for the needs of the newly-established Catholic University of Lublin. Some of the Renaissance features of the exterior of the church were preserved but the interior was radically revamped to resemble early Christian temples.