The construction of the church and the adjoining collegium took place during 1616-1639 according to design of the Italian architect Giacomo Briano. Some other famous architects such as Benedetto Molli, Pavlo Gizhitsky, Andriy Ahorn, Yosyp Uminsky, Mykhailo Sobolevsky, and Faustyn Hrodzytsky, to name a few, also contributed to the improvement and certain changes in the structure of the Lutsk Church of the Jesuit Order (Societas Iesu).
Initially, the style of the church was distinctly Renaissance, later it gradually shifted to Baroque and Classicist. On the whole, the church constitutes a three-nave cross-domed basilica (based on a Greek cross) with bypass galleries and two towers at the corners of the main facade. The main facade is the most opulent, considering the abundance of volumes, planes and the number of axes in its structure. The centre of this composition Central is represented by a sculpture of the Holy Virgin Mary standing on a globe fighting a serpent. On the lower tier of the entrance installed the sculptures of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. The church is also known for its dungeons, which sometimes go so deep as to three levels.
Besides, the excellent acoustics amplifies the sound of a huge organ. The instrument is used not only in the course of liturgy as an accompanement, but also at special concerts of classical music, which often take place in the church.
The Jesuit Collegium adjacent to the church was once a well-known higher education institution with a well-stocked library and a student theater. The students of the Collegium were mostly represented by children of nobles from different parts of Volyn Voivodeship and less often by those of Lutsk citizens.
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Kafedralna St.6
We invite you to visit the main tourist site of Lutsk – a medieval castle of the XIV century. It won first place in the category “castles” of the All-Ukrainian competition “Seven Wonders of Ukraine: castles, palaces, fortresses”.
Mision of the museum is to create museum institution of the highest level that changes past, reflects present and creates future to develop the nation spirituality and promote Ukrainian art in the world. Here you can see the largest painting in the world – “Cosmogony”, covering an area of over 2000 square meters.
The Chortoryiski princes Tower is the only one of the 8 towers of the Lutsk Lower (Okolnyi) Castle that has survived to this day. The Museum space «Okolnyi Castle» is a modern historical part of the defensive structure of Lutsk from the 14th – 17th centuries. The Upper Lutsk Castle was rebuilt from wooden fortifications to stone ones between the late 14th and 15th centuries. The first line of defensive of the Upper Castle, the Okolnyi Castle, began its transformation in the early 16th century, when wooden towers were gradually replaced with stone structures.
In addition to the above-ground city, Lutsk has an extensive network of underground tunnels. The two levels of the underground city housed sacred objects, a refectory, a prison, and tombs. There are many legends about the unique two-level underground complex, the entrance to which is located beneath the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul. Their height is particularly impressive, reaching almost 8 meters in some places.
Lutheran church (now Baptist) in Lutsk an architectural monument, located on Karaimska Street, 1 in the State Historical and Cultural Reserve “Old Lutsk”.
The Museum Space «Okolnyi Castle» is a new tourist attraction created on the basis of restored architectural monuments of national importance: the Chortoryiski princes tower with part of the defensive wall and the Jesuit Monastery with its dungeons.
