A church on this site dates back to the 14th century when the wooden church of St. Leonard was built here. This was replaced by a Gothic wooden construction and graveyard in the 16th century and it wasn’t replaced with a brick one until well after the time of Jan III Sobieski in 1772. The new church was called St. Anne's and was founded by Prince August Adam Czartoryski to a design by Jan Kotelnicki. Czartoryski’s grand-daughter, Aleksandra Lubormirska Potocka,  decorated the church with art in the period 1799-1831, the most precious of which is the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary in the main altar.
Between 1857 and 1870, Aleksandra’s son August and his wife extend the church to a design by Henri Marconi. The church gets a Neo-Renaissance look and the marvellous dome is added. In the gardens surrounding the church building you will find terracotta shrines marking the fourteen Stations of the Cross while within the church, in the crypt under the chapel, are the tombs of the Potocki family.
The church suffered damage during both world wars and was even used as an internment camp by the Nazis, who also looted and damaged it. The church bells dating from 1723 and 1777 survived thanks to the bravery of the local people who hid them and these are now housed in the newly built Third Millenium Tower.
The church is a particularly beautiful one to visit nowadays thanks in no small part to the work of the parish priest Bogusław Bijak and it is protected as part of a complex of parks, buildings and original roads running into the centre of the city as a national Historic Memorial.