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Dominican Church of the Holy Spirit

Dominican Church of the Holy Spirit

Photo: Umnik · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Location
Vilnius, Lithuania
Client / Owner
Vytautas
Year
Completed c. 1408
Access
Public
Typology
Spiritual
Style
Baroque

The Dominican Church of the Holy Spirit stands at Dominikonų Street 8 in Vilnius. A Gothic church was built here around 1408 by Vytautas, and King Alexander Jagiellon gave it to the Dominican monastery in 1501. Fires in 1610 and 1655 destroyed it, and it was rebuilt, expanded and reconstructed between 1679 and 1688.

The church is in a high and late Baroque style, with playful Rococo ornamentation inside. It is 167 feet (51 meters) tall including the cupola. It has sixteen altars, a lavishly decorated pulpit and many Baroque frescoes, and forty-five of its paintings are considered art monuments. Beneath the church, vaults hold the remains of about six hundred people.

Tsarist authorities closed the monastery in 1844, and its neighboring buildings later served as a prison. After World War II the church became the main church of the Polish community of Vilnius.

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