Church of Saints Peter and Paul, Romanesque church in Skviřín, Czech Republic
The Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Skviřín is a rectangular single-nave building with a flat-ended presbytery that forms one continuous space with the nave. It is originally Romanesque, with a sandstone semicircular portal with cylindrical archivolts and leaf capitals on the south side, a Romanesque window in the east wall of the presbytery, and a prismatic tower on the west facade. The nave and presbytery are vaulted with ribless cross vaults from the Baroque reconstruction.
The church is originally Romanesque, built perhaps between 1260 and 1270, or possibly founded shortly after 1230 by Ratmír of Skviřín, ancestor of the lords of Švamberk. A Gothic rebuilding took place in 1384, leaving the roof truss above the presbytery and nave with a walled-in Gothic window. A Baroque reconstruction followed around 1700, dated by some to 1720; in the 1990s the tower was raised and reshaped and a sacristy added.
The church is dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul and stands on a slight rise in the eastern part of Skviřín's village green, ringed by a former cemetery whose wall still encloses it. A preserved first-floor doorway in the tower once opened onto a tribune, suggesting the church belonged to a manor complex; the sandstone portal on the south wall, with its cylindrical archivolts and leaf capitals, is the detail to look for.
The church stands on a slight rise in the eastern part of Skviřín's village green, surrounded by a former cemetery; the entrance is through a gate in the western cemetery wall. The tower's ground-floor and first-floor doorways preserve the original Romanesque entrances to the nave.
A preserved first-floor doorway in the tower once connected the church to a tribune, and the surrounding wall enclosing the former cemetery suggests the church was built as part of a manor complex.
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