One of the most recognisable landmarks of Lviv is the late Renaissance chapel of the Boim family, located next to the presbytery of the Latin Cathedral. The chapel has an unusually rich architectural stone decoration of the facade and stucco in the interior. It has never been rebuilt or transformed, making it an authentic example of 17th-century architecture and sculpture.

Founder
The chapel was founded by the cloth merchant Jerzy Boim, called "Dziurdzia", which is a polonised version of the name György. He was originally from Hungary and came to Lviv during the reign of Stefan Batory. In 1590 he married Jadwiga Niżniowska, with whom he had a son Pavel. In 1603-1608 he served as a city alderman, and in 1611 he became a member of the Lviv city council. He died in 1617 and was buried in the chapel he founded.

His son, Pavel George Boim, who returned to Lviv after studying philosophy and medicine at the University of Padua, also rests here. He was a city councillor from 1620 to 1641 and served as alderman from 1627. An interesting figure was his grandson Michał Piotr Boim, who, after joining the Jesuit order, worked as a Polish missionary in China, taking the name Pu Mi-ko Cze-jüen. He studied Chinese medicine and made an 18-card 'Chinese Atlas'.

History of the Boim Family Chapel
In 1615, the chapel was consecrated by the Archbishop of Lvov Metropolitan Jan Andrzej Próchnicki. In the 1630s, stall stalls were set up near the chapel on the side of Halytska Street, and a cemetery wall adjoined the chapel on the north side.

At the end of the 18th century, the Boim family died out and the chapel passed into the hands of the cathedral chapter. The visitation report of 1817 noted that wine was stored in the crypt after the bodies had been removed, and that the building itself served occasionally as a pre-burial chapel for the canons and vicars of the cathedral. Outside of these ceremonies, 'kitchen items and household utensils' were stored in the chapel.

During the first half of the 19th century, renovation work was carried out and services resumed. The second half, on the other hand, brought, with the formation of the doctrines and structures of the conservation services, an intense interest in the chapel. The first inventory drawings and publications about it were produced, and the poor condition of the building and the need for restoration were repeatedly reported. However, it was not until 1925-1927 that a wider range of work was carried out under the direction of Professor Tadeusz Obmiński.

In 1932, the Boim Family Chapel was declared a monument. Between 1945 and 1967 the building was closed and used as a warehouse. In 1967 it housed the first branch of the Lviv National Picture Gallery, renamed the Boris Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery in 2013.

The Boim Chapel in Lviv was of interest to 20th-century art history scholars. Czesław Thullie and Władysław Łoziński attributed the stone decoration of the façade to the sculptor Hanusz Scholz from Silesia, while Daniel and Hanusz Blok were considered the authors of the other sculptures. Tadeusz Mańkowski believed that the author of the interior decoration was Jan Pfister. Mieczysław Gębarowicz attributed the authorship of the chapel's architecture to Andrzej Bemer. None of the above hypotheses has been confirmed by the sources, so the attribution of the Boim Chapel remains undetermined to this day.

The chapel - architectural features
Chapel of the Holy Trinity and Passion. The Chapel of the Holy Trinity and the Passion of Christ, also known as the Ogrojcowa Chapel, is a single-storey basement building on a square plan, with a cupola and lantern. It is a brick building, partly in plaster work, with the front and partly rear elevation in richly carved limestone decoration. The horizontal divisions of the façade - the crowning cornice and the cordon cornice - are blended into the adjacent building, originally used as a scholars' infirmary. At tambour level, there are corner gabled roofs with sloping ridges, while above the tambour is a cupola covered with copper sheeting. The stonework of the lighthouse has stained-glass windows in rhombuses. The lighthouse is covered by a cupola surmounted by a limestone figure of the Sorrowful Christ. The façade on the Halytska Street side features painted portraits of George Boim and his wife Jadwiga.

The interior decoration of the chapel is extremely rich. In its lower part there are wooden stalls with backrests and panelling. The altar wall with a tripartite architectural composition in the central part shows the Prayer in the Garden of Olives, flanked by representations of the Washing of the Feet and the Last Supper. On the southern wall of the chapel are two richly carved marble epitaphs: the epitaph of Sigismund Bresler (pre-1618), the first husband of Catherine Boimówna, daughter of George, and the epitaph of the Boim family (pre-1641).

Above the beam zone, the upper parts of the walls are separated by wide arcades decorated with hardware ornamentation and cartouches with winged heads supported by pairs of angels. The base of the dome is a frieze of triglyphs and metopes. The dome's canopy is composed of three circles of coffers filled with bas-relief busts and coat-of-arms cartouches in wide, moulded frames. Small stars are placed between the coffers, and lion and angel heads between the corners. Shallow coffers, separated by fittings and stars, are also set off in the dome of the lantern.

In 2019. POLONIKA Institute commissioned the 3Deling company to make a full inventory and 3D model of the chapel. We invite you to learn more about the result of the collaboration and view the 3D scanning of the Boim Chapel in Lviv.