Church of Saint Leonard, Romanesque church building in Mušov, Czech Republic
The Church of Saint Leonard is a stone church with a red tile roof and a tower with a tall pointed spire topped by a small metal cross. Its light rough stone walls have three tall pointed windows with dark grilles and a smaller arched window, with an arched doorway below the leftmost window. Inside, a vaulted space with crumbling plaster reveals brick and rough stone, and a balustrade with a repeating arcade of small pointed arches runs across the foreground.
Built in late Romanesque form probably in the 1220s–1230s and first documented in 1276, the church was rebuilt in Gothic style after a fire in the second quarter of the 14th century. A tower over the sacristy replaced the Romanesque façade tower between 1758 and 1771, and Ferdinand Kowalski's regothicization of 1911–1912 gave the tower its present spire.
The church is named after Saint Leonard, to whom the surviving Gothic figurative frescoes inside relate. Pilgrims left inscriptions on the walls in the 16th century, and the building served as the parish church of Mušov until the parish was abolished in 1978.
The church stands on an islet in the Věstonice reservoir, which has been a nature reserve since 1994, so it is not normally accessible. Access has been proposed via a ferry from the dam and a lookout in the tower, but no regular crossing exists. The building is statically secured but unrepaired.
It is the only island church in the Czech Republic and sits amid the Nové Mlýny reservoir. The building remained in place when the original valley was flooded to create the reservoir system.
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