The four Cistercian foundations in Lesser Poland - Jędrzejów, Sulejów, Wąchock and Koprzywnica - with their characteristic three-nave "Bernardine" abbeys, are usually referred to by architectural historians as the Burgundian group due to similarities in design and scale, which reflected the pattern propagated by the Morimond Abbey, their mother monastery. The fact that they were built one after the other, often by the same sponsors, as well as a common spatial design and a common set of architectural details, allows us to assume that the same team (workshop) was involved in each construction. The latest hypothesis connects the construction of four Lesser Poland abbeys with a presumed Italian workshop associated with the monasteries of Fossanova, Casamari and San Galgano. The Italians were to receive an order from Bishop Jan Odrowąż and work under the supervision of an equally alleged master, Szymon. Analyzes of the walls show that large-scale construction works began only 40-50 years after the arrival of the founding community. This observation invalidates the assumption that the first group of monks settling in the new place was accompanied by masons and craftsmen from the parent Cistercian monastery. All the abbey churches of the four monasteries were built in the first third of the 13th century. They are characterized by the same spatial layout, but differ significantly in the use of building materials and the level of technical skills, including: in the construction of sophisticated groin vaults and buttresses. Since more and less advanced technologies coexisted at the beginning of the 13th century, they cannot be used to date buildings, nor do they question the presence of a single architect. Work on the eastern wing of the monastery usually started after a break of 20-30 years. Its late Romanesque form looked quite conservative at that time. Since in the late Middle Ages the number of monks decreased and converts almost disappeared, the monastery consisting of the church and the eastern wing was in fact complete and could function independently on a pars pro toto basis, i.e. as a substitute for the entire Cistercian complex. The fact that the eastern wing was actually supposed to be self-sufficient is evidenced by its heating installation (hypocaust furnaces discovered in Sulejów and Wąchock). The next phase of construction works focused on the refectory, initially conceived as a free-standing building. Completion of the remaining wings progressed slowly, sometimes even into the 17th century. It should therefore be stated that despite the common belief in the uniformity of the design and timeliness of construction of the four "Burgundian" monasteries in Lesser Poland, over the course of many centuries they acquired their quadrangular form.