Vilnius: Two Religious Sites

Christmas holidays got in the middle of blogging, and I finally got around to the last of the Baltic cities we visited: Vilnius in Lithuania. Vilnius came at the end of the trip.  The weather had gotten increasingly cold and gray, we had gotten increasingly tired, and we were worried about the trip home because of a forecast of bad weather in NY.  So, all in all, I don't have as much to record and, because the light was so bad, my pictures aren't very good.

Vilnius is a city with many churches.  Most of them are Catholic; there is one Jewish synagogue.  This is a historic reversal from less than a hundred years ago when before World War II, Jews made up 45% of the population and there were more than 100 synagogues.  Most famous was the Great Synagogue which was partially destroyed by the Nazis, then razed by the Soviets.  Scientists are now trying to trace its foundations through some kind of radar technology with the goal of recreating a virtual copy.

Religious architecture in Vilnius spans roughly from the 15th century to the present.  Thus there are many styles of churches, from Gothic to Baroque to Historicist to Eclectic.  Instead of giving a parade of images, I'm going to show two buildings that that I found particularly interesting:  the Church of St Anne, which was built 1495-1500 in the Flamboyant Gothic (more particularly Brick Gothic) style, and the one standing synagogue left in Vilnius, the Choral Synagogue, built in 1903 in the Moorish style.    

The Church of St. Anne.  This flamboyantly Gothic cathedral is constructed entirely in red brick.  

Apparently (this was news to me), there is a specific style of Gothic architecture called (fittingly) Brick Gothic, which is found in Northwest and Central Europe, particularly around the Baltic Sea, where there is not a lot of standing rocks.  As you can see, the building is extraordinarily detailed and complex, and all this is achieved by intricate layering of brick.

The interior is primarily decorated with wood.

According to legend, Napoleon saw the church in 1812 during the Franco-Prussian war and expressed a wish to take it home to Paris "in the palm of his hand."

The Choral Synagogue.  This small building, Vilnius's only surviving synagogue, is still in use by its small congregation.  It was built  in 1903 by Dovydas Rosenhauzas.  

 

 Art Nouveau synagogue is built inn the "Moorish" style, as were many turn-of--the century European synagogues, which were looking for a style that would indicate they were something "other" than Christian.

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