Dominican monastery and cathedral
Church of the Holy Eucharist
Ukraine, Lviv
The Dominican Cathedral and Monastery is a religious building in Lviv, one of the most significant monuments of Baroque architecture in the city. In the 1990s, the cathedral was transferred to the UGCC and is called the Church of the Holy Eucharist. Since 1972, the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism has been located in the buildings of the monastery and the bell tower (the modern name is the Museum of the History of Religion).
The first Roman Catholic Dominican monastery and cathedral was built in Lviv in the Gothic style in 1370-1375 according to the design of Nicholas Cech.
In 1749, the foundation was laid on the same spot for a new Roman Catholic Dominican cathedral designed by the engineer and architect Jan de Witte, a talented fortifier and commandant of the Polish fortress in Kamianets-Podilskyi. Funds for the construction of the church were allocated by the Polish hetman Józef Potocki. The construction was led by Martin Urbanik, from 1764 by Krzysztof Muradovich, and the façade was completed by S. Fessinger. In 1865, according to the project of the architect Yulian Zakharevich, a four-tiered bell tower, stylized in the spirit of Baroque, was added to the church. In 1895 the dome was rebuilt, in 1905-1914 the interior of the temple was restored. In 1956-1958, new restoration work was carried out.
The church is made of stone, in plan it represents an elongated cross with an oval central part, two radially located chapels, a rectangular altar and a vestibule. The church is crowned with a huge elliptical dome, which is supported by eight pairs of powerful double columns. The strongly developed cornice and the decorated pediment of the portal make the façade dynamic and expressive. This effect is enhanced by the sculptures on the pediment, made from different angles.
The architecture of the church showed the influence of the Cathedral of St. Peter and the Church of Maria di Monte Santo in Rome, the Cathedral of St. Dominic in Bologna, the churches of St. Charles Boromeus and St. Peter in Vienna.
In the interior of the church, a luxurious baroque altar is decorated with four large statues made by artists of the circle of M. Palejovsky. Galleries and loggias are decorated with wooden statues made by Lviv sculptors of the second half of the 18th century. The original sculptural design by K. Fessinger has been preserved in the interior. There are several valuable monuments of art: the marble tombstone of Y. Dunin-Borkovskaya by the famous Danish sculptor B. Thorvaldsen (1816), the monument to the Galician governor F. Gauer by A. Shimzer (the beginning of the 19th century), the monument to the Polish artist A. Grotger by V. Gademsky (1880).
Adjacent to the church is the building of the monastery cells, rebuilt anew in 1556-1621 and restored after the fires of 1766 and 1778.
In the Dominican Cathedral, an alabaster statue of the Virgin of St. Jacek was kept, which the missionary Jacek Odrowonzh brought from Kyiv to Galich, and then she ended up in Lviv.
In 1559, Galshka Ostrozhskaya, the heiress of the vast fortune of the magnates of the princes Ostrozhsky, was hiding in a Dominican monastery, who was tricked into marrying the Polish governor Luka from Gurka. Halshka's husband laid siege to the monastery, and then cut off the water supply, after which the Dominicans surrendered and handed over Halshka.
In the building of the Dominican monastery in 1707, an agreement was signed on an alliance between Russia and the Commonwealth in the war against Sweden.
In Soviet times, since 1972, the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism was located in the complex of the Dominican monastery.