Information about the object:
. A church built in 1914, dedicated to Our Lady of Czestochowa and Blessed August Czartoryski. The church is linked to the history of this, widely known worldwide, only Polish village in Turkey, as well as to the history of the Polish community on the Bosporus. To this day, the building brings together residents of Polish descent from a settlement celebrating the 178th anniversary of its foundation this year. The church is of Adampol architecture and construction.

Made of spruce planks, the church's barrel-vaulted ceiling consists of 6 quarters separated by arches with a sparse decoration consisting of panels and plaster rosettes; an inscription in Polish, "POD TWOJA OBRONKAMI UCIEKAMY SIĘ", is placed on the rainbow arch. A stucco moulded cornice runs along both sides of the nave, decorated with a flat ornament of acanthus leaves. The ceiling is painted in monochrome with water-based paint, the ornaments in oil, with gilding in flake gold laid on mixtion, the stucco rosettes coated with lime whitewash. The surface of the ceiling, which had not yet undergone conservation, was dirty, with damp patches due to leaks in the roof; the boards were infested with woodlice.

Completed works:

2021 (phase I)
The task involved restoration and conservation work. The implementation of the task was complementary to the activities of the Polish residents of Adampol, who, through the Polish Consulate in Istanbul, requested assistance in the renovation of the temple. Earlier, the Association for the Heritage of the St Mary's Catholic Church and Cemetery, founded by its residents, had requested assistance for the renovation of the church. The church's roof was sealed so that the interior of the church is no longer flooded by rainwater. This finally creates favourable conditions for the full conservation of the ceiling above the nave of the church with the crowning cornice, an element of the decoration (currently most in need of conservation intervention). The building is currently in constant use and is visited by tourists, as well as by numerous delegations and representatives of the government and parliament of the Republic of Poland. The church was built primarily with funds from Poles living in Turkey, but also from fund-raising on the territory of the then non-existent Republic on the maps. The restoration of the church and the conservation of the furnishings, which often come from Poland, is a priority task for all descendants of Poles living in Adampol and Turkey. Thanks to the efforts of the Polish community, a renovation documentation of the church ceiling by Polish specialists has been prepared.

2022 (stage II)
The task was to complete the conservation of the wooden collector's ceiling in the Church of Our Lady of Czestochowa and Blessed August Czartoryski of 1914 in Adampol (now Polonezköy).

The work included cleaning the surface of the church from dust, dirt and secondary protective layers, disinfecting and disinsecting the wood, gluing up parts of the paint layer that were falling off and peeling, impregnating the wood, carrying out necessary carpentry repairs, completing the consolidation of the paint layer in the technique of the original, protecting the surface with varnishes, conserving the stucco cornice and the capitals of the pilasters with the reconstruction of unpreserved elements.

Funding: Programme of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage "Protection of Cultural Heritage Abroad".

More about the project: 2021 and 2022

• Fundacja Ochrony Wspólnego Dziedzictwa Kulturowego „Terpa”, realizacja w latach 2021 i 2022.