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Main - - Culture - Architectural monuments - Vitebsk region Polotsk St. Sophia Cathedral
Polotsk St. Sophia Cathedral is a monument of architecture of the11th-18th centuries. It was built in Polotsk on a high bank of the Western Dvina River under the rule of Prince Vseslav Brechislavovich in 1044-66 (according to other sources in the years 1050-60) as a symbol of the Christianization of the principality in the Orthodox rite. It represented the type of a Byzantine cross-domed church with three semicircular altar apses; it had seven chapters in the round light drums on sixteen supporting pillars. In the north-west corner there is a square tower with a spiral staircase leading to the gallery for the prince and the courtiers. The walls are lined with a narrow brick (plinfa) and stone in the technique of striped masonry ("with a hidden row "); they are plastered inside. The floor is laid with ceramic tiles. In the late 15th-early 16th centuries it was rebuilt into a temple of a defensive type with four corner towers and a central dome, in the17th century it was transferred to the Uniates, the towers being removed according to the order of I. Kuntsevich. From 1705 it was used by the Russian army as ammunition storage and was destroyed by an explosion on May1, 1710. In its place in the years 1738-1750 a new Uniate church in the style of the late Belarusian (Vilna) Baroque (architects I.H.Glaubitts, A. Osikevich, contractual masons B. Kosinski, A. Dobrogovsky) was erected the in the form of a three-nave one- apse basilica with a two-tower facade.And therewith the sanctuary is shifted from the east to the north (the length of the first church determined the width of the new one). Partially preserved altar apses of the11th century entered into a new composition and were repeated symmetrically on the western facade like the wings of the transept. The crowning masses of the construction are towers, gables, highly artistic plastic openwork forms. The naves in the interior are bridged with cross-vaulting, the apse is separated by the altar wall with a spatially expanded three-tiered grouping of order items, finished with a bas-track "New Testament Trinity ". Different periods of the existence of the cathedral were studied by numerous researchers. In 1985, the restoration was completed (architect V. Slyunchenko), it functions as an organ concert hall. It is a historical and cultural value of national importance.
© National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 2011
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