Abstract

The article is about the study of the history of one of the unique architectural monuments of Kyiv – Stt. Peter’s and Paul’s Church (early 17th century) and its bell tower (mid-18th century). The church was only one example of the Gothic architecture in Kyiv preserved till 1930s. At the same time, it was only one Kyiv’s Rome-catholic (Dominican) temple which survived through the anti-Polish war in 1648–1654 had being transformed into Orthodox church. The author tries to trace the process of construction and reconstructions of the temple and its bell tower and understand how the buildings looked like during different periods of their existence and which transformations they underwent during 17th – 19th centuries. The author uses rare images of these buildings and descriptions of contemporary witnesses as sources. The analysis of similar buildings of the same time also helped to the author in hypothetically reconstruction of the previous views of the church and the bell tower. As a result of the research, the author concludes that originally the building of the Dominican Church of St. Nicholas (later the Orthodox Stt. Peter’s and Paul’s Church) had the form of late Gothic architecture. In the middle of the 17th century. the building was reconstructed in the forms of European Baroque and in 1744th – 1750th the temple was redesigned in the forms of Ukrainian Baroque style. Analyzing the architecture of the bell tower of Stt. Peter’s and Paul’s Church (as well as the architecture of other baroque bell towers in Kiyv) the author concludes that this building never had three tiers, contrary to popular belief among historians. The author argues that none of the churches in Podil (historian district of Kyiv near the Dnieper river) had no more than two tiers in18th century. This is confirmed by images of this district of Kyiv at that time. The author suggests that the third tier could be mistakenly called a large baroque dome of the bell tower, which burned down during the fire in 1811 and was replaced by a classicism style one.

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