Corpus Christi Church, Nesvizh
Early Baroque Jesuit church of 1593 holding the Radziwill family crypt, part of the UNESCO Nesvizh site.
Mikolaj Krzysztof Radziwill, called the Orphan, brought the Jesuits to Nesvizh and commissioned this church from the Italian architect Giovanni Maria Bernardoni, who worked on it from 1587 until its consecration in 1593. Modelled on the Gesu in Rome, it is a cross-domed basilica with a flat, pilastered front and is generally described as the first Baroque building in the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and among the earliest anywhere outside Italy. It stands just outside the castle park, linked to it by a bridge and gate tower.
The interior was covered with frescoes in the eighteenth century by Ksawery Dominik Heski and his family, with a large Last Supper above the high altar, and holds marble tombs and a Baroque pulpit. Beneath the nave lies the Radziwill crypt, begun in 1616, which contains more than seventy coffins of members of the family from the sixteenth to the twentieth century and is the largest dynastic burial vault in the region. The church forms part of the Nesvizh estate inscribed by UNESCO in 2005.
Highlights
- Cross-domed basilica of 1593, an early Baroque design after the Gesu
- Radziwill family crypt with more than seventy coffins
- Eighteenth-century frescoes by the Heski family of painters
- Part of the UNESCO-listed Radziwill estate at Nesvizh
![Afrique occidentale française : Cathédrale à St Louis / [photogr. Eugène] Gallois ; [photogr. reprod. par Radiguet et Massiot pour la conférence donnée par] Gallois](https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Afrique_occidentale_fran%C3%A7aise_-_Cath%C3%A9drale_%C3%A0_St_Louis_-_%28photogr._Eug%C3%A8ne%29_Gallois_%3B_%28photogr._reprod._par_Radiguet_et_Massiot_pour_la_conf%C3%A9rence_donn%C3%A9e_par%29_Gallois_-_btv1b532798828.jpg/500px-thumbnail.jpg)
![[Golestan, Le Salon et Fete de l'equinode, Teheran, Iran (le Pavillion du Trone)]](https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/-Golestan%2C_Le_Salon_et_Fete_de_l%27equinode%2C_Teheran%2C_Iran_%28le_Pavillion_du_Trone%29-_MET_DP202918.jpg/500px--Golestan%2C_Le_Salon_et_Fete_de_l%27equinode%2C_Teheran%2C_Iran_%28le_Pavillion_du_Trone%29-_MET_DP202918.jpg)
![Théâtre de la guerre dans l'Inde sur la coste de Coromandel / par M.B.C.T. [Monsieur Bourcet Capitaine ?] ; gravé par Croisey](https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Fort_de_Calicuta_-_btv1b59706294.jpg/500px-Fort_de_Calicuta_-_btv1b59706294.jpg)
