Holy Trinity Church in Zelva - a historic parish church in Zelva, in the district town of the Grodno region of the Republic of Belarus. Built in 1913 in the style of modernised neo-Gothic according to the design of architect Jozef Pius Dziekoński.

History of the parish and churches in Zelva
. The first church in the village called Zelwa Wielkie was founded in 1470 by the hereditary landowner Michał Naczowicz (Nocewicz, Nacewicz). It received the invocation of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. James and St. Michael the Archangel.

Another, the Holy Trinity Church, situated on a high hill overlooking the square in the centre of today's town, was founded after 1614 by Lev Sapieha. It was built of half-timbering and had a tower in the façade. It was destroyed during the Northern War.

Another one was erected on the same site in 1739-1743 at the expense of the collier Antoni Kazimierz Sapieha and through the efforts of the parish priest Konstantin Jaskold, a canon of Livonia. The wooden church had a centralising form - a plan similar to a Greek cross, with a large dome lit by windows rising at the intersection of the arms. It was not fully equipped until the late 18th century. By the 1830s it was already in a very poor condition and in 1836 the parish priest, Fr Jan Kotzigk, asked the Bishop of Vilnius for permission to build a brick church.

In 1839, a makeshift wooden chapel was erected and the old church was demolished. Eventually, permission for the construction of a new temple was obtained only in 1858, and in 1860, on the site of the demolished church, construction of a new, brick and fieldstone church began. However, it was only possible to bring the building up to the height of the windows, because in 1863 the authorities forbade further construction due to Pastor Kotzigek's active support of the January uprising.

In 1866, the parish was abolished and the unfinished church was designated as an Orthodox church, but no work was undertaken on it until 1907. A temporary chapel was closed and subsequently demolished around 1895-1904.

In 1897, local Catholics asked the Governor of Grodno to return the walls of the unfinished church, and then to grant permission to build a new temple elsewhere. In 1908, the authorities issued a final refusal to return the begun building, but in March 1905 permission was obtained to build a new church on the outskirts of the town, which was to be a branch of the parish in Krzemienica. Despite the formation of a committee and fundraising, construction was delayed. A first design was drawn up in 1906, but the committee felt that the temple would be too grand. A temporary chapel was erected in the town square.

The turn of 1906-1907 was a time of bloody religious conflicts. Catholics then made an unsuccessful attempt to reclaim the walls of the church, the construction of which had begun in 1860. Images of saints, a cross and a makeshift altar were brought to the disused walls. The Orthodox pastor, to whose jurisdiction the walls were handed over, also built and consecrated an altar here, and soon initiated efforts to finish the church, for which he obtained permission and government aid. In response, on 2 January 1907, a group of Catholics surrounded the church hill, preventing the unloading of stones to build the church. As a result of the police intervention, seven people were killed, about 30 were injured and 22 were brought to justice. The church was finished in 1909-1910.

The matter of building a new church was not abandoned, however. On 1 February 1909, a second, more modest church project by architect Jozef Pius Dziekoński was submitted to the Grodno governor. The foundation stone of the church on a plot of land located on the north-western outskirts of the town was consecrated on 27 June 1910. The new building was finally completed in September 1913, and on 29 October 1913 the Dean of Vilnius, Fr. On 29 October 1913, Father Czerniawski, Dean of Vilnius, consecrated it as the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The indigent parish could afford only modest furnishings for the church.

In September 1939, the communist militia murdered Father Jan Kryński - the Roman Catholic parish priest - and the priest of the Orthodox parish in Zelva. Both churches were closed. The Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was handed over to the municipal council and housed, among other things, a grain store and a bottle warehouse. The Holy Trinity Church "on the hill" fell into disrepair, with only its foundations and the remains of the church cemetery with several 19th-20th century tombstones.

The Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was given back to the faithful in 1989. Reactivated a year later, the parish now functions under the traditional invocation of the Holy Trinity. The church was extensively renovated before 1998, and a set of neo-Gothic styled furnishings was completed in 2001. The parish is currently served by Claretian missionary priests.

Architecture of the church from 1913
. The church is located in the north-western part of the town. The two-towered church with modernised neo-Gothic features was built of brick, on a granite block plinth; the blends and window divisions are plastered. It has the form of a three-nave pseudo-basilica with a three-sided closed chancel.

The façades are framed by simple scarps, with pointed-arch windows in the walls. The tall towers of the façade have three storeys, the upper ones have an octagonal ground plan and are topped with slender spires. At the bottom, they are slightly protruding beyond the outline of the body and surrounded by an arcade in the ground floor. The central part of the façade features a large tripartite pointed window with a fishbowl motif. The crowning gable has three narrow windows. On the ridge of the high roof of the main body, the lower slopes of which are bent, is an openwork bell turret.

In the interior, the naves are connected by four pairs of high pointed-arch arcades; the choir opens into the naves through similar arcades. The crystal vaults in the chancel and sacristy have a modernised form.

Outline of artistic values
The church in Zelva is one of only three (besides the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Bialystok and the Church of St John the Baptist in Mścibov) of the projects of the Warsaw architect Jozef Pius Dziekoński realised on the territory of the diocese of Vilnius. The project was created in the most fertile period for him, between the Tsar's decree of tolerance and the World War, and clearly breaks out of the commercial trend represented mainly by the Vistula-Baltic style. The church in Zelva is characterised by features of the national style, which is characterised by a desire to break with the tradition of brick Gothic 'cathedrals' in favour of the use of familiar Polish motifs and materials (here: arcades, stone facing the façade provided for in the design) and modernist styling of the vaults and simple towers.