Church of St. John Chrysostom, Lviv

The Church of Saint John Chrysostom in Lviv occupies a layered place in the city’s spiritual and architectural history. Located on Lysenko Street, this building once served as the monastery and church of the Franciscans of the Most Holy Sacrament, and now functions as an active parish of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Construction of the present edifice began in the 1870s after the Franciscan nuns fled persecution under Prussian rule and relocated to Lviv. The initial architectural proposal by Carl Gregor was rejected for being too modest, prompting Julian Zakharevych — despite his Protestant background — to step forward and draw up a more ambitious design, which the city accepted. Work on the monastery complex and church progressed through the 1880s, with formal consecration of the church in 1889.

The church’s exterior is built of red and yellow bricks accented by stone elements, left unplastered to highlight the natural texture of the materials. A single-nave basilica running along a north–south axis defines the interior layout. The nave is topped by a cross-vault supported by tall semi-columns with cubic Romanesque capitals. On either side lie chapels dedicated to Saint Francis (east) and Saint Josaphat (west). The façade presents a two-tiered design crowned by a triangular pediment with a lost stone cross, flanked by slender decorative towers. Over the nave rises an octagonal tin-covered tower with a slender spire crowned by a cross.

Visitors today can still see original stained-glass windows crafted in Munich between 1887 and 1889. In the narthex, the central window depicts the Sacred Heart of Jesus; the side panels show Saint Melania and the Archangel Michael. A round window in the façade captures the motif of the Immaculate Conception. Inside, 20th-century floral and geometric ornamentation painted by Julian Krupsky reflects the building’s later interior decoration. Although much of the original altars and ecclesiastical furnishings were lost during Soviet times, the church continues to stand as a testament to Lviv’s shifting religious and cultural landscape.