are-frescoes
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Everything Else
— 3 years ago(December 30, 2022 06:24 AM)are-frescoes
Some of the most magnificent frescoes can be found in the ‘Paris of the Balkans’!
Preservationists in Albania’s Voskopojë are racing to save hundreds of 18th-century Orthodox masterpieces in time-ravaged churches.
Deep in southeastern Albania, a tiny hamlet holds five churches that have one of the most magnificent concentrations of Orthodox Christian fresco art in the world.
From the outside, the churches in Voskopojë resemble stone barns, a reflection of their 18th-century heritage as Christian gathering places in the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Inside, however, they reveal painted masterworks of brilliant blues, reds, and yellows that come to life in themes both awesome (Christ the Almighty, or Pantocrator) and eccentric (St. Nicholas outsmarts the goddess Artemis). “For us, it’s like the Louvre,” says Albania’s Minister of Culture, Elva Margariti.
There are no other sites in Albania or in the world quite like the Voskopojë churches and their 43,000 square feet of frescoes. The government designated them Cultural Monuments and, in 2020, it recognized the village center where most of them are located as a Historic Ensemble. Perhaps more importantly, the frescoes are a striking East-meets-West artifact of a multicultural, multireligious Albanian identity many feared would be extinguished under the former Communist regime.
It’s a minor miracle that the frescoes survive at all. Beginning in the late 18th century, Voskopojë was ransacked and razed three times in 20 years. It was burned in World War I and bombed in World War II. Of the more than 20 churches that once stood in the village, only six remain, including the five with frescoes.
In recent decades, these architectural and artistic treasures have fallen into disrepair. One church sustained what a regional authority called “SOS”-level damage under heavy rainfall in 2021 when its roof partially collapsed. Another was declared in critical condition a year later.
Now, as tourism in the area rises, a cadre of dedicated researchers and restorers is racing to save the churches. In November, the Ministry of Culture unveiled an ambitious proposal that would bring art preservationists from all over Europe and conservation architects to restore them before it’s too late.
‘
The Paris of the Balkans
’:
Albania has a turbulent history. Over thousands of years, the country was occupied by several empires, from the Roman to the Byzantine to the Ottoman. It was under the last that Voskopojë thrived, becoming the “Paris of the Balkans” by 1760, as observers wrote.
Voskopojë, by then a bona fide city, controlled a lucrative overland trade route between the Adriatic and Istanbul, linking the Ottomans to the doges in Venice, the Habsburgs in Vienna, and beyond. At its peak, as many as 50 craft guilds operated, attracting and training artisans like tailors, goldsmiths, and gunsmiths. For a time, the city had the only printing press in the Ottoman Empire, fed by the New Academy, a crucible of Enlightenment ideas founded in 1744.
The city’s economic prowess enabled it to flourish as a center of Orthodox Christian faith and art in the Islam-dominated empire, leading to a boom in the church building. But beginning in the late 18th century, the city began to decline. In 1769 marauders, likely from the surrounding region, pillaged Voskopojë. Inhabitants fled, and the once grand city was reduced to a small village. It was set back further by the major wars of the 20th century.
After World War II, dictator Enver Hoxha consolidated his rule over Albania, enforcing atheism under his Communist regime. The surviving Voskopojë churches were, at best, neglected, and used as warehouses and storage spaces. Churches elsewhere were demolished. The secretly faithful hid religious icons under floorboards in their homes. Priests, as well as imams and other clergy, were executed or sent to labor camps.
“I think it is important for [today’s] children to know what their ancestors believed, what they sacrificed, and what they fought to save,” says Fjoralba Prifti, director of the National Museum of Medieval Art in nearby Korça, which holds 6400 icons, including many saved from the Voskopojë churches.
(The Ottoman Empire reigned for 600 years. Here’s why it rose and fell.)
When the regime fell in 1991, villagers gathered at St. Nicholas. “Although they were afraid, they had each other,” recalls Father Thoma Samaraj, head priest of Voskopojë’s churches since that time. “God always told us, ‘I am within you.’”
Time has continued to degrade the churches. In 2002 and 2004, they earned dubious recognition on the World Monuments Fund’s “watch” list of at-risk heritage sites. In 2018, they made Europa Nostra’s “7 Most Endangered” list.
“It is a constant intervention site, the whole village,” acknowledges Margariti, the minister of culture. But it has weathered worse. “This is the spirit of the Albanians—always resisting and always showing that they can carry on their art, their cultural heritage, t