The Church of St Michael the Archangel, together with the second Bernardine Monastery in Vilnius (after Zarzeczna), was founded on the grounds of his house by Lev Sapieha (d. 1633), Chancellor and Lithuanian Hetman, a convert from Calvinism, formerly of the Orthodox faith. In time, he dedicated it to his mausoleum and that of his next two wives: Dorota of Firlej (d. 1591) and Halszka of Radziwiłł (d. 1611). His sons with their families and successive generations of the Sapieha family were also buried in the church's vaults.

The temple is located in the immediate vicinity of the Bernardine Monastery, which has been in Vilnius since 1469, and the Bernardine Cloister, the so-called "zarzeczna" monastery, which was founded in 1496. It stood in a place where a Calvinist parish had been developing intensively under the auspices of the Radziwills since 1576, which led to riots in the following century and finally to the expulsion of Calvinists outside the city walls in 1640.

Architecture

The church is a rectangular wall and pillar structure without a separate chancel, built as a single-nave church with prominent pillars supporting a lunette barrel vault and a system of scarps supporting the façades. The façade of the church is two-storey with slender towers built on a circular plan, turning into a hexagon in the upper storey.

The church was inspired by the architecture of the Lublin region at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, which was created mainly by newcomers from the Italian-Swiss borderland. This is evidenced, among other things, by the frail towers, which have their models in the church in Uchanie (1603-1635) and, above all, in the Jesuit church in Lublin (after 1584).

The connection with the community of Lublin builders is also evidenced by the stucco decoration. The artistically shaped mouldings form a complex grid on the vault with a radial and net-like outline, growing out of the 'karo' shaped field, where the Sapieha coat of arms, Lis, was placed. It is broken by the drawing of stars, polygons, circles and hearts. Inside all the figures are rosettes, and the places where the slats intersect are decorated with small gules with floral decoration or the inscription IHS. The same forms and the coat of arms of Lev Sapieha can be found in the monastery refectory.

The stucco decoration can also be found on the façade, whose ornamentation (plant-geometric frieze, gable with Marian monogram and IHS inscription, leafy capitals of pilasters) is the effect of the "exit" of stucco to the outside of the buildings, which took place a few years earlier in the Lublin region, in the above-mentioned church in Uchanie and in the temple in Turobin (1920s-17th century), by Jan Wolff. His work should also be seen as inspired by the richness of the vault stucco layout of the Vilnius temple.

Against the background of the Republic's construction, the church is distinguished by the absence of a separate chancel, both in plan and in the vault decoration. Most probably, the reduction is related to the limitation of its function. It was not a parish church and the Bernardine nuns listened to Mass from a specially arranged room.

Sapieha's tombstone and the main altar

The unified interior of the church allowed the marble tombstone of Lev Sapieha and his two successive wives, Dorota of Firlej and Elżbieta of Radziwiłł, to be perfectly exposed inside. The monument is a monumental, multi-part structure, which was combined with stalls and placed next to the main altar. It was made in 1629 by Jan Philippijn Wallon and Wilhelm Pohl from multi-coloured marbles. It also contains paintings depicting, among others, the archangels, the Crucifixion, God the Father and the dove of the Holy Spirit.

In the church, in one of the side altars, there was also an image of Our Lady of Sapiega, considered miraculous and crowned with crowns brought from Rome in 1750 (it is now in Vilnius Cathedral).

Courtyard

In 1703, on the initiative of the Bernardine prioress Felicjanna (Teofila) Chłusewicz and the Bernardine preacher Chrysostom Łosowski, a covered gallery was built around the church for processions. Although its roof has not survived, there are reminders of it in the columns, which were originally topped by statues of saints. The Prioress also led the reconstruction of the bell tower (1719-1722). The bell tower was fitted with a bell with a Latin inscription, stating that it was cast in 1731 by the famous Vilnius master Andrew Dorling. The belfry is topped by a cupola with a gilded weathervane in the shape of Michael the Archangel.