Architecture + Design: Church of St. Anthony - Rivne, Ukraine, or in search of gargoyles - Part One.

The light illuminated my sick soul, no, I will not disturb the peace of the cathedral, no, I will only collect materials for the article, and I will go home to write these verses ...

This is how the aria of Claude Frollo, one of the heroes of the musical Notre Dame de Paris, could have sounded if he had a blog in Houllier and competed with Quasimodo only in writing articles about Notre Dame Cathedral.

But, it would be difficult to do, Quasimodo is a strong competitor, almost a drone-quadcopter, he climbed on the roof of the cathedral and attentively examined the gargoyles that adorned the porticoes and attic of the cathedral.

He always had fresh material for writing articles.

But, after a fire that severely damaged Notre Dame de Paris, they would have to look for a new object to photograph and describe the architectural nuances.

Most likely, they would be looking for a building similar to Notre Dame de Paris, and they would find it in a small, Ukrainian town, near the border with Belarus, in the city of Rivne.

In the central part of the city, not far from the banks of the Ustye River, in the shade of trees, there is a Catholic cathedral, very similar to Notre Dame de Paris.

Every architect, I guess. dreams that his structures, which he designs, would make people stop, think, reflect on the different images that arise when looking at this architectural object.

It happens, poets mention interesting buildings in poetry, artists depict them in their paintings, and I created a modest photo collage after the fire that hit Notre Dame de Paris, and I used photographs taken in a city very far from Paris.

I called it "Wisdom That Doesn't Protect." We cannot foresee all disasters, and even a fire alarm cannot come to our aid.

So today turned out to be a good day and my daughters decided to accompany me on the way to the Church of St. Anthony, which is very similar to Notre Dame de Paris.

The architect Konstantin Voitsekhovsky created this project of the church, which was built in 1899.

Earlier, on this church there was a spire, which, he lost, like Notre Dame de Paris.

However, the Parisian cathedral lost its spire as a result of a fire, and the church of St. Anthony went through many wars and a change of power.

Soviet power was worse than a fire, but it is a miracle that today, we can see not ruins, but, quite, decently, a preserved building that has lost its target audience, or, flock, and passed into the hands of the proletariat which arranged concerts there and other celebrations.

Even today, this building is the Philharmonic.

At the level of rumors, they say that it is planned to transfer the building to the Catholic Church, but so far, this is just gossip.

I propose to come closer to this building and take a closer look.

This post will be the first part of the story about the Church of St. Anthony.

I have taken 140 photographs and most of them show the architectural and design ideas in the construction of this building.

I do not want to speak briefly about this small masterpiece of architecture and, therefore, I will split my story into 3-4 parts.

The similarity of this building to Notre Dame de Paris made me look for the gargoyles that adorn the attic of Notre Dame de Paris, I wonder if I can find them?

The minibus stopped on the opposite side of the street and I did not immediately see the church, which modestly looked out from behind the walls of a multi-storey building.

The hustle and bustle of the street cannot belittle the splendor of this building.

Some sources call this style of architecture - Nadvislian-Baltic neo-Gothic. Here I see some fusion of Gothic and Byzantine style of architecture, but not being an expert in the classification of styles. I could be wrong.

The facade of the building reminded me of the Nolle house in Odessa, which I talked about earlier. But, the shape of the window and doorways is sustained in the same style, pointed, or broken, Gothic arches.

In order to get closer to the church, we had to go down to the underpass and cross the roadway, we had to get used to the bright light of the day before starting the photo session.

I cannot say that the church fits well into the atmosphere of a modern city, or rather, on the contrary, a modern city is not something that should surround such a church, lol.

The small square in front of the churches was slightly ennobled. In its center, a forged sculpture in the form of a harp was placed on which a small cupid sits.

This cupid is similar to the cupids we saw on the attic of the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater.

Above the central entrance to the church, there is now a bas-relief with the inscription "Hall of Chamber Organ Music".

It is now quarantine time and I had no hope of getting inside. The central entrance was tightly closed.

Posters do not fit well with the Gothic interior.

Above the main entrance we see a round, patterned window with a built-in clock, decorated with small stained-glass windows, but they can be clearly seen from the inside.

This is how this window looks closer.

Two arches of side entrances are also decorated with stained-glass windows. They look dull, only from the outside. The small lantern looks very harmonious and reminds of those times when these lanterns were lit with the help of an icon lamp.

The right, side entrance is used as a ticket office for selling tickets to the organ hall.

We see two nymphs, or muses of creativity, who stand on small porticos above the entrances to the building.

If you look at the left, side entrance, then, there, the situation is even worse, there, they sell coffee, as the inscription on the century-old doors says.

This muse has a book in her hands, apparently, this is the muse of writers.

The theatrical mask in the hands of this nymph says that this is the muse of the theater - Melpomene.

Perhaps this is the muse of poetry, I'm not sure about that.

It's hard to say what this muse is holding in her hand, it looks like a half-open Motorola Razr V3 phone lol.

On the second tier, on the sides of the round window, we see classic, Gothic windows with stained-glass windows.

We see the same window from the other side. The windows obviously need restoration.

On the sides of the facade, on the third tier, we see double, Gothic window openings and inconspicuous stained-glass windows.

From the opposite side, the stained-glass windows can be seen better.

In the central part of the third tier, we see the fusion of window opening styles on the first and second tiers.

We see a magnificent window where you can see gothic windows inscribed in one window topped with a round window.

The entire architectural ensemble is decorated with stained glass windows.

On the attic we see an ornament in the form of flowers with four petals.

The building of the church is enclosed between two cotrfors.

In this photo you can see the top of the left buttress.

On its walls you can see niches in the form of Gothic arches.

The upper part of the facade of the church, between the buttresses, is also decorated with a stucco ornament in the form of broken, or pointed arches.

The right buttress is symmetrical to the left.

I must say a few words about the size of the church building.

The width of the facade is 25.63 meters, the length of the building is 42.05 meters and the height is 22.10 meters.

You can see the stiffening ribs that strengthen the side walls of the church.

We will also talk about the properties of the soil where this building was built.

It's funny, on the sides of the complex window on the third tier there are two niches on which loudspeakers were hung.

It looks like a relic of the Soviet Union era.

An impression is made. that, now, from this loudspeaker will sound "Farewell of Slavianka", lol.

Stained glass, gothic, and this relic of the past ... weird.

I suggest you start walking around this building and see if I can get inside, lol.

In the meantime, I have to say goodbye to you, but we'll see you again, in the second part of this story about the Church of St. Anthony.

Enjoy your reading and viewing photos!

To be continued!

Author @barski
Ukraine

For my publications, I do not use stock photographs, it is fundamentally important for me to use photographs that I have made with my own hands for publication and I can name them - authorial work.

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