The old College of Piarists in Chełm. History – architecture – authorship

Abstract

The building of the old College of Piarist in Chełm – located on Lubelska Street, near the late baroque Church of Holy Apostles the Messengers – is now the seat of the Wiktor Ambroziewicz Chełm Land Museum. Until now, it has not raised much interest among researchers and – appearing as a work of architecture devoid of expressive style features – has not been the subject of scientific reflection. This situation is changed by the disclosure of the preserved drawing from 1698, showing the building in a horizontal projection and axonometric view, stored in the Archivio Generale delle Scuole Pie in Rome. The information contained in written documents kept there allow to determine the time of construction of the building for the years 1698-1700. The project proves that the preserved edifice did not change substantially its one-story block, set on the plan of the letter H. The innovations concerned only the roof part over the main body, which was originally the Krakow roof, and the extension of one of the side wings in 1720-1724 (so that the college was connected to the church). Neither did the subsequent transformations significantly affect the internal divisions, be it in the two-and-a-half tract main corpus, with the cross-corridor communication system introduced therein, or in the single tract side wings. The shape of the building and the severity of the development of its facade, representing the baroque in its classicizing version, suggests the designer – Giuseppe Piola, an architect working in Warsaw at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, building, at the request of the Piarist order, also their church and monastery complex in Szczuczyn. However, the extension of the college wing made in the first half of the 18th century should probably be associated with the person of another capital architect – Carlo Antonio Bay, who at the same time, together with his son-in-law, Vincenzo Rachetti, also an architect, made calculations for the Piarist priests from Chełm for the profitability of their parcel located in the suburbs of the city of Lublin. The building in Chełm was a monastic college, and at certain times also a “profesorium”, in which Piarist clerics learned philosophy at a higher level of education. Contrary to some suggestions, there was never a public school run by the Piarists in this building. It was founded – as a Russian gymnasium – only after the January Uprising and the dissolution of the Scholarum Piarum community.