Church of Saint Barbara, Rajca, Eastern Orthodox church in Rajca, Belarus.
Church of Saint Barbara is an Orthodox church building in Rajca featuring prominent Gothic Revival architectural traits. The structure displays pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and thick stone walls characteristic of its style.
A wooden church dedicated to the Nativity of Christ stood in Rajca by 1652, served in 1680–1682 by priest Mikalaj Rajecki with 405 parishioners. In 1817 Franciszek Rajecki built the present stone church as a Uniate church and family mausoleum. It was reconsecrated as an Orthodox Church of the Transfiguration in 1863. Soviet authorities blew it up during the Khrushchev persecutions; it was rebuilt in its original form and consecrated to Saint Barbara in 2003.
The church is also called the Kostel-usypalnitsa, a burial church, because Franciszek Rajecki and his descendants were interred in a vaulted crypt beneath the floor. A stone with a bas-relief of the head of John the Baptist was set into the nave wall, and a spiral staircase on the right of the choir leads up to the bell tower.
The church is located in the rural area of Rajca and is best reached on foot or by local transport. Visitors should note that religious services follow the Orthodox calendar and may interrupt access during active worship.
The church was built as a ship-shaped Uniate church in 1817 by Franciszek Rajecki, then reconsecrated Orthodox in 1863. In the postwar anti-religion campaign a tractor managed only to topple the plaster statue of the Virgin and wreck the decorative towers and buttresses; the church was restored in 2003.
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