Soly. Church of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Story

The Catholic parish in Soly was founded in 1589. At the same time, the first wooden church was built at the expense of Hetman Christopher Radziwill. The temple was destroyed during the Russian-Polish war of 1654-1667 and during the Napoleonic invasion, but each time it was rebuilt. In 1926-1934, when the area was part of interwar Poland, a modern stone building was erected on the site of the old wooden church. The church was built in the Art Nouveau style according to the design of the architect A. Dubanovich. The construction was funded by parishioners; a total of 540 thousand zlotys were spent.

After the Second World War, the church did not close and continued to remain active. Included in the list of historical and cultural values of Belarus. Some polls include it among the ten most beautiful Catholic churches in the republic.

Architecture

The temple building has an asymmetrical, multifaceted, volumetric-spatial composition. The main volume of the temple is covered with a gable roof. The nave is joined by a transept and a semicircular apse, covered with a separate conical roof. The side arcade galleries with figured columns give the building a special uniqueness. The vertical dominant of the building is a side two-tier tower with a figured top. Another octagonal turret is located above the central cross of the church.

The interior of the church features an altar image of the Mother of God of Czestochowa and side frescoes, probably painted in 1934 or in the 1990s (this dating is inferred from the inscription in the lower right corner of the frescoes, which indicates the name of the patron of the fresco - priest-canon Mieczysław Skorodyuk, who lived in Biało Podlaska from 1933 to 2008) - “Defense of Czestochowa” and “Miracle over the Vistula”. The first depicts the defense of the Yasnogorsk monastery in 1655 from the Swedes, the second depicts the victory of Polish troops over the Red Army in 1920 (draped today).