Most beautiful temples of Belarus

I am originally from Belarus so today's post is again about my home country. I have already written about temples of Minsk and about St.Sophia Cathedral of Polotsk. And today's post is about the most beautiful temples of Belarus. What is interesting, most of these temples are situated in small towns or even villages.

photos courtesy Ivan Tsyrkunovich

St.Trinity Church, Gervyaty village, Grodno province. The church was built in 1899-1903 instead of the wooden one of 1526 that had been at the place before. This church is considered the most beautiful temple of Belarus. More than 61 m in height and being the tallest temple in the country, this church with its complex framework structure is a really breath-taking sight.

Beautiful Christian temples of Minsk

In Belarus there are two major branches of Christianity - Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. So, in the streets of the capital of the country, Minsk, one can find temples of these both Churches.
The main temple of the Orthodox Church is the Holy Spirit Cathedral. It dates from the 17th century. The layout of the building is a three-nave basilica. The main and the medium naves are higher than the side ones and have their own window configuration. The relics sacred for the Orthodoxy are placed in this cathedral. Among them is the icon of the Blessed Virgin of Minsk.

Miraculous stone icons

At the memorial complex "Kurapaty" (a wooden area in which a vast number of people were executed between 1937 and 1941 by the Soviet secret police) on the outskirts of Minsk there is an unusual exhibit of forty four stones with the images of different saints painted on them. The author of these icons is an icon-painter of the Minsk Holy Resurrection parish, Anatoly Kuznetsov. Critics commonly refer to his work as amateurish, and the church believes that the saints painted by him don't follow the canons of iconography. But the matter is that the artist calls his work "restoration of the image hidden in the stone," he simply sees with the inner sight what is already there on the stone, and only helps by painting and varnishing the image. Often Anatoly sees images of saints in his sleep or after prayers.