Neoklasycystyczne kościoły i kaplice Poznania : projekty, realizacje i konserwacja wybranych obiektów

The sacral architecture of Poznań during the inter-war period was dominated by Classical churches and chapels. The parish churches of the Lord’s Resurrection in Wilda and St. John Vianney in Sołacz constitute essential vista accents, both as regards their architectural quality created by celebrated Poznań-based architects and associated with the landscape of monumental spatial disposition. The first church to realise the premises of Classicism was the commemorative church of the Resurrectionists, built in 1923 according to a project by Aleksander Kapuściński in a traditional scheme of a classical temple embellished with a three-column Ionian portico crowned with an armorial cartouche in a triangular tympanon. In 1925 the eastern part of the church became blended into the monastic house designed by the architect in an analogous style. The whole complex was supplemented by a campanilla erected in 1937 according to a project by Tadeusz Hornung. The picturesque location of the complex on the edge and slopes of the escarpment over the Warta made it possible to create a two-level terrace garden, whose upper part, in the shape of a courtyard closed with a bannister, was combined with the lower part with a slope fortified by means of three-lane stairs. A different form within the doctrine of Classicism was granted to the church of St. John Vianney, built in 1930 according to a project by Stanisław Mieczkowski in the form of a dome rotunda encircled with an area including a presbytery closed on three sides, covered with a dome and flanked with a pair of sacristies whose facade was shaped by means of a six-column Corinthian portico. The church obtained a key localisation in the garden district of Sołacz on a considerable hillock, thus crowning the prolongation of the diagonal axis of the park stretching at its foot. Despite the rather small scale, its solid, upthrust with a terraced arrangement of stairs, appears to be imposing, surrounded by the loose villa development. The Classical style is also represented by the chapel of St. Lazarus (today: the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary), built in 1924 according to a project by Adam Ballensteadt with a cohesive, elongated solid covered with a ridge roof with an ave-bell. The characteristic feature of the front elevation is an axial two-column arcade while the back elevation is preceded by an Ionian columnade. To the west the chapel was blended with the buildings of the hospice of the Mercy of St. Vincent à Paolo, thus creating the frontage of Sielska Street in Górczyn. Serious wartime damage was rapidly eliminated thanks to the initiative of the parish priests. During the last two decades of the twentieth century the church of the Lord’s Resurrection regained its former brilliance due to conducted conservation, while the interior of the church of St. John Vianney partially lost its original appearance owing to a new painted decoration of the dome and the modernisation of the presbytery. From the conservation viewpoint protection is due not only to the architecture of the discussed objects, but also to the asserts of their spatial planning, which the Poznań churches have preserved up to this day, thus comprising prominent accents within their districts and, at the same time, within the far perspectives of the widely comprehended town landscape.