Mogilev. Church of the Virgin Mary (Stanislav).

Before the revolution, there were 4 churches in Mogilev. And this is the only church that has been completely preserved to our time. The Carmelites founded the wooden church and monastery in the 17th century. The buildings burned down during the Northern War in 1708, when by order of the Moscow Tsar Peter I Mogilev was burned. And the brick architectural complex was built in 1752 in the Baroque style. At the end of the 18th century, the facade was rebuilt in the style of classicism using the Ionic order. The interior of the church is decorated with fresco paintings in the Baroque style by Mogilev masters in the middle of the 18th century. On the main nave there are 3 large compositions: "Transfiguration", Presentation of the keys to Peter, "Ascension of Mary". On the wall of the main nave, the first fresco on the right is "Granting a charter by King Sigismund to a Carmelite monk" with a panorama of Mogilev from the 18th century. In 1780, the Russian empress Catherine II visited the church, who later ordered the creation of the Mogilev Catholic Metropolis, the main cathedral of which was the Church of the Virgin Mary (sometimes called the Stanislav Church). And all the churches of the empire were subordinated to the Mogilev church. In the 1930s, the church was closed and it housed an archive. The archive existed here until 1989, when the church was handed over to the faithful. The ancient organ has not survived: it was destroyed in the 1950s, when there was an archive here. Today's organ was brought from Belgium a few years ago. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the international sacred music festival "Mighty God" has been held annually in this church, in which representatives of various denominations from various countries of the world took part.