Description of the attraction
Borisoglebskaya (Kolozhskaya) church was built in the XII century. This is the oldest architectural monument that has come down to our time from pre-Mongol times. The church was supposedly built during the life of princes Boris and Gleb Vsevolodkovich and named after the martyrs, patrons of the princes - saints Boris and Gleb.
A fire of 1183, which began due to a lightning strike in one of the buildings of the city, destroyed almost all the functioning churches. Only the Borisoglebskaya church remained, which temporarily served the city as a cathedral church. After Grodno passed under the rule of Lithuania, the temple was repeatedly ravaged by German soldiers. Each time, the church walls were carefully patched up. The result is such an unusual combination of brickwork and boulders.
In the 16th century, the temple was repaired and put in order by Bogush Boguvitinovich. He restored the destroyed walls and roof. Services were resumed in the church. But she was ruined again. In the middle of the 16th century, the church stood empty, without windows, doors and a roof, only walls.
After the Brest Cathedral in 1596, the Kolozha Church was transferred to the Basilian (Uniate) monastery. Later, repeated attempts were made to restore Kolozha, but all of them, in the end, ended in another ruin.
In the middle of the 19th century, a serious landslide threat appeared - the high bank of the Neman, on which the church was built, was washed away by the river. The temple could collapse at any moment. Despite the measures taken by the authorities to prevent a landslide, on the night of April 1–2, 1853, the river bank, and with it the temple wall, collapsed into the water.
In 1897, the bank was fortified, and the wall was patched up as best they could. Since then, the city authorities have been going to restore the ancient church all the time, but no one has gotten around to it.
The Borisoglebskaya Church in Grodno is included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1991, the temple was transferred to the Orthodox Church, services were resumed in it.
