The Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church, also called the Jesuit Church, stands on Teatralna Street in Lviv. The Jesuits began building it in 1610, and Archbishop Jan Andrzej Próchnicki consecrated it in 1630. Sebastian Lachmius prepared the first design, modeled on the Church of the Gesù, and Giacomo Briano changed it and supervised construction from 1618 to 1621. When finished, it was one of the largest churches in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The church holds stucco and paintings by Matviy Klymkovych from 1638 and a grand central altar by Sebastian Fesinger. A bell tower, reportedly about 330 feet (100 meters) tall, was built in 1702 and pulled down in 1830.
The Soviet government closed the church in 1946 and later used it as a warehouse and book depository. It was transferred to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in 2010 and re-consecrated in 2011.
Comments