Description of the attraction
According to one version, the Church of St. John the Baptist was built in 50 or 70 in the 13th century by Prince Lev Danilovich for his wife Constance, daughter of King of Hungary Bela IV. Archival data claim that the temple did not appear earlier than the middle of the 14th century. Researchers have identified the Gothic cross masonry under the plaster layers, which is characteristic of that period. For some time the church was owned by the order of Dominican monks, later - by the Uniate Armenians.
Initially, the temple was single-nave, with a faceted apse. Numerous reconstructions have changed the architecture of the building. In the 17-18 centuries, side chapels were added to it, giving the building a cruciform shape. After the fire in 1800, the temple was empty for thirty-six years. A new restoration of the premises was carried out in 1887, and the architect Y. Zakharevich gave the church a neo-Romanesque style. The adjacent territory of the temple is surrounded by a brick fence with a three-arch bell tower.
The reconstruction of the building was carried out in the late 80s of the 20th century thanks to the Lviv branch of the Institute "Ukrzapadproektrestavratsiya". In the course of research, restorers have recreated the original appearance of the stone temple. Many Gothic elements were discovered, which served as the basis for some authors to assert about the Gothic nature of the building.
Today, the temple houses the Lviv Museum of Ancient Monuments, the most valuable exhibit of which is the icon "Lviv Mother of God", dated to the middle of the 14th century. Also on display is a plastic panorama of the 18th century city.
