Baroque cemetery in Střílky, Baroque cemetery in Střílky, Czech Republic.
The Baroque cemetery in Střílky stands on a raised spot in the upper part of the village, opposite the church, enclosed by a massive sandstone wall. It has a square ground plan with cut-out corners and covers almost 2,000 m². A two-armed staircase leads to an entrance platform with an over-life-size statue of the Angel of Death, above a crypt; a funeral chapel with two more crypts stands at the rear.
Antonín Amand Petřvaldský of Petřvald had the cemetery built between 1730 and 1743; the builder Ignác Josef Cyrani of Bolleshaus is considered its author. It was consecrated on 12 May 1743, though its sculptural decoration was never finished, even after the last Petřvaldský died. Repairs followed in 1872 and 1896, and the collapsed rear-left wall was fixed in 1927–1928.
The sandstone wall carries paired sculptural groups by Gottfried Fritsch and his brother Josef Antonín: human virtues on the right side, vices on the left. Four stone vases stand in the grounds, and two larger-than-life angels flank the funeral chapel at the rear.
The cemetery stands in the upper part of the village on a rise opposite the church, enclosed by a massive sandstone wall. A two-armed staircase climbs to the entrance platform with the over-life-size statue of the Angel of Death; the crypt lies beneath the platform and the funeral chapel with two further crypts at the rear. The terrain is level once inside the square plan with cut corners.
The cemetery's drainage system was designed to speed up the decomposition of buried bodies. Ten valuable sculptures were stolen in 2001 and later replaced by copies during the reconstruction begun in 1998.
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