To this day, very few objects of wooden Latin sacred architecture once located on the territory of the historic First Republic have been preserved on Ukrainian territory. They are usually in a state of far-reaching destruction. A chance to save one of them turned out to be the Lviv Museum of Folk Architecture and Material Culture, known as 'Shevchenko Grove'.

By their very nature more prone to destruction, objects of wooden sacred architecture had little chance of surviving the 20th century, the events of which often dramatically affected the territory of the historic First Republic. This is particularly acute in the western part of modern Ukraine. While there is a fair amount of wooden Orthodox church building preserved in these areas, a small number of religious architecture of Latin provenance survived the Second World War, but not a single wooden synagogue. Further devastation occurred after 1945, during the communist regime. As a result, only a few wooden churches are preserved today, usually in a state of far-reaching destruction: St Anne's Church (18th century) in Vishenki in Volhynia (still in 1996. transferred to Kowel), chapels in Rozlucze and Ilnik near Sambor, a church in Jazlovchyk (20th century) and ruined buildings in Stanislavchyk (17th century) and Ruda Brodzka (19th century) - the latter three located near Brody (just over 100 km east of Lviv).

Church in Jazlovchyk
In 1933-1934 a small church was built in the village of Jazlovchyk, funded by Pavel Golinovsky and designed by a professional architect - a branch of the Brody parish (which at the time included, apart from the town itself, almost twenty surrounding villages). It is a single-nave building, rectangular in plan (6 x 9 m), with symmetrical rooms of identical size (4 x 3 m) on all corners; on the eastern side they contain two sacristies, on the western side a kind of utility room and a staircase to the choir. The walls are of log construction. The church is covered by a high and steep gabled pent roof, covered with shingles. The characteristic little bell tower, topped with a wrought-iron cross, was destroyed in 2006. The floor in the nave is finished with parquet, in the side rooms with boards.

What remains of the original building is the original altar topped with the Eye of Providence with interesting carving details (and the name of the founder) and a few modernist details (carved doors, wooden frames of the round windows, door frame with oak leaf and acorn motif, wrought iron grilles in the windows, balustrade of the balcony).

"Journey" of the church from Yazlovchyk to the Lviv open-air museum
. In 1996, the first discussions were held with the Ukrainian side on the transfer of the church from Yazlovchyk to the Lviv Museum of Folk Architecture and Material Culture (called "Shevchenko Grove"; lvivskansen.org) - the largest open-air architectural museum in western Ukraine. In 2011, on the initiative of Professor Romana Cielątkowska of the Faculty of Architecture at the Gdansk University of Technology, attempts to save the historic temple in Jazlovchyk were revived. After analysing the possibility of preserving the object in situ together with Ukrainian partners, it was decided that the most appropriate solution was to translocate the church to the open-air museum in Lviv.

As part of the preparatory work, in the summer of 2011, a detailed inventory and photo documentation of the building, which was in danger of being destroyed, was made. In 2012, the first stage was carried out, involving the dismantling of the church and the preservation by conservation methods of the structural elements and historical equipment. During the next season of work, in 2013, the preserved original elements of the monument, supplemented by reconstructed ones, were assembled on the grounds of the open-air museum in Lviv. The project was financed by Poland from the funds of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, whose operator was the National Heritage Institute. The ceremonial presentation of the church from Yazlovchyk after the completed renovation and conservation works took place in autumn 2013 at the Lviv Museum of Folk Architecture and Material Culture.

Documenting the historical cultural landscape
As a result of several years of consistent efforts and good Polish-Ukrainian cooperation, the unique ensemble of historic folk architecture collected in the "Shevchenko Grove" was supplemented by a monument of wooden Latin sacred architecture. The implementation of this project made it possible to document the multi-ethnicity of the historical cultural landscape of the Polish-Ukrainian borderland.

It is also worth noting that the project to move the church from Yazlovchyk to the open-air museum in Lviv was carried out in parallel with a twin project to translocate and reconstruct the Greek Catholic Church of the Protection of Our Lady (Pokrovska) from the village of Kupna near Przemyśl to Godkow near Elbląg. Both initiatives were carried out as part of the international programme entitled 'Heritage of the Past is the Foundation of the Future', implemented since 2008 under the auspices of the International Scientific Committee on Shared Built Heritage ICOMOS. Meanwhile, the energy, determination and commitment of Professor Romana Cielątkowska, who died prematurely in 2016, also made it possible in 2015 to carry out conservation work on the wooden chapel of St Francis Borgia in Rozlucze, near the springs of the Dniester River in the Boyko region.
While you are in Lviv, it is therefore worth visiting the "Shevchenko Grove", picturesquely located on the Kajzerwald Hill in the eastern part of the city, to see one of the last wooden churches in Ukraine that has been saved from inevitable destruction.