In Podgórze, a separate city annexed to Kraków in 1915, a parish was established in 1818 with a modest chapel arranged in adapted rooms of a government building. The first classicist church with a low tower at the front was built in 1832 to a design by engineer Franz Brotschneider. In 1905 the building seemed about to collapse, so it was demolished.

The new neo-Gothic temple was built between 1905 and 1909 according to a design by Lviv Polytechnic Professor Jan Sas-Zubrzycki. In 1999, the church underwent renovations including the main and side altars, pulpit and organ, and was returned to the original white and grey colour scheme. It is a three-nave church with chapels. Its façade, decorated with sculptures, is flanked by towers, two lower on the sides and a tall one in the middle with a dome reminiscent of the St Mary's Basilica tower. The interior, which is in the Vistula Gothic style, features mainly wooden, neo-Gothic furnishings: seven early 20th-century altars, pews, pulpits, and confessionals.

The church rectory, dating from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, stands on the site of a former quarry and has cellars carved into the limestone rocks, now called the quarry named after John Paul II. During the church construction, a cave was also discovered where, according to legend, Master Twardowski – an alchemist to King Sigismund Augustus – may have worked.

Decorated above the garages, the Holy Family Terrace is family-friendly with a gazebo, play areas, garden tables and chairs. A library with magazines, books and films on family issues is being created in the gazebo. The terrace with a gazebo is intended to be a place for families and church visitors to relax and meet for discussions or lectures and book promotions. The terrace connects to a beautiful garden where, at the back of the church, the greyish-white rocks of a former quarry are the backdrop for Golgotha Podgórska, the sculpture garden of Professor Wincenty Kućma, who placed the Stations of the Cross on natural rock shelves and, above, a gallery of more than 20 sculptures telling stories of faith, history and patriotism.