The Church of Saint George in Luková: an abandoned temple with atypical inhabitants

@ElentirENG ES 4·14·2023 · 23:45 0

Luková is a town in the Pilsen-North district, in western Bohemia, in the Czech Republic. Currently it only has seven inhabitants.

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The main building of this town of medieval origin is the old Church of San Jorge. Built in the 14th century, it suffered a serious fire in 1796, which destroyed most of the temple. After reconstruction in 1800, misfortune struck this temple (initially Catholic, then Ultraquist, and finally Lutheran) again during the First World War, when three of its bells were requisitioned to melt down the metal.

Another event ended up condemning this old parish, when the roof of the church collapsed in 1968. Since then, religious acts have ceased to be held in this church and it has been abandoned, a circumstance that the Czechoslovak communist dictatorship took advantage of to plunder the temple. The only thing that remained in the building were the benches.

After decades of neglect, in 2012 the sculptor Jakub Hadrava chose this abandoned church for an installation artwork titled "My Mind". The installation is made up of 32 ghost sculptures, which have served to once again draw attention to this temple. However, the neglect continues and so are the sculptures, as can be seen in this video from Chris Luckhardt, published in October 2020:

You can see here some captures of the video. In this we see the poor state of the church's roof, which if not repaired will end up collapsing again.

And here are some images of the ghost sculptures. They are sitting on the benches as if they were attending a mass.