Continuing our Lvovs’ tour along the “Podzamche” we comes to the last church of the district – the Church of Saint Paraskevi Pjatnisa (Tserkov Svyatoi Praskovii or Pyatnitskaya Tserkov, No. 63, St. Bogdan Khmelnitsky). In addition to “Paraskevi” there are many other variations of this Greek female name – such as Pascha, Petka, Paraskeva, Praskovia, Praskovie, Pyatnitsa, Pyetka, Paraskevoula and Voula.
In the 13th century this was the site of a church made of quarry-stone that communicated by means of a subterranean passage with Prince’s Hill. It was a highly fortified edifice on the boundary of Okolny Gorod. The Church of Saint Paraskeva Pjatnisa was built on the foundations of the preceding church; it was completed between 1643 and 1645. Vasily Lupul, a Moldavian nobleman, contributed to its construction and thus earned a place for Moldavian rulers who were later buried on the premises. The southern wall of the church is decorated with their coat of arms – the sun, the moon and a crown.
In the 17th century the interior and outer walls of the church were decorated with frescoes. The paintings inside, made at the end of the 18th century, are the work of Lvov painter Luka Dolinsky. Fragments of an old frieze depicting heads of angels and garlands of fruits have been preserved on the extenor of the tower.
[...] Saint Paraskevi church is particularly known for its remarkable iconostasis consisting of more than seventy individual fragments. This church is a true masterpiece of Ukrainian part of the 16th-17th centuries. Painters whose names are unknown managed to achieve an intriguing combination of vivid national co louring coupled with western influence. In Lviv one often comes across traditional iconography and compositional methods of Ukrainian painting influenced by the North Italian Renaissance and the German-Flemish school of painting. The gold-plated wooden iconostasis will astonish you with its elaborate fretwork and tracery. [...]