Saint Sophia Cathedral, Polotsk
Belarus's oldest stone church, rebuilt in Vilnius Baroque, housing a museum and an organ concert hall.
The first cathedral was raised between 1044 and 1066 by Prince Vseslav of Polotsk, making it the earliest stone building known on the territory of modern Belarus and one of only three churches dedicated to Holy Wisdom in the early East Slavic lands. Byzantine masters built it in mixed brick and stone on a cross-in-square plan. The church was damaged repeatedly during the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and an explosion of stored gunpowder in 1710 destroyed most of the medieval fabric.
Between 1738 and 1765 the ruin was rebuilt for the Uniate Basilian order to designs by Johann Christoph Glaubitz, the leading architect of the Vilnius Baroque, who turned the church through ninety degrees and gave it twin west towers and a richly modelled facade. Fragments of eleventh-century masonry, foundations and fresco survive in the lower levels and form the core of the museum display opened in 1987. A concert hall with an organ was installed in 1983 and remains in regular use.
Highlights
- Eleventh-century foundations and masonry preserved beneath the Baroque church
- Twin-towered Vilnius Baroque facade by Johann Christoph Glaubitz
- Museum display on the building's architectural history, opened 1987
- Concert hall of about 300 seats with a Czechoslovak-built organ
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