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Street Prophets Friday: The Leaning Church and The Lost Town of Karvinná [1]

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Date: 2023-09-29

Greetings and welcome to another fuzzy little slideshow to kick off a bit of community open threading.

Have you seen that moon? Yowl! Yowl!

This week I've got a remarkable leaning church and the story of a town of over 20,000 people that has become not much more than a name on maps.

The first record of a settlement in this area dates back to a document from 1268 and the first mention of the name Karvinná is from a list of tithes paid to the bishopric of Wroclaw in 1305. Near the end of the 18th century coal was discovered here and mining began in 1794. The region still has active coal mines. Karvinná became a major industrial center in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in 1923 it was granted town status. At its height in 1930, Karvinná boasted 22,317 inhabitants and over 1800 homes— double the size it was just thirty years earlier.

The coal mines in the area eventually took their toll. The earth under the town had been hollowed out, inevitable instability lead to collapse. As their homes began to crumble, people reluctantly abandoned them. From less than 13,000 people in 1960, Karvinná dwindled to 320 inhabitants in 2009. Today, it is unoccupied.

Once a dominant feature of the town, perched atop a hill, was the Church of Saint Peter of Alcantara. Built in 1736, the Baroque style church replaced a 15th century wooden church dedicated to Saint Martin:

The drawing is a tiny bit misleading, in that, when the ground under the building began caving in, the church had the full bell tower pictured on the photo on the left. The tower was actually shortened twice in attempts to lower the building's center of gravity and prevent it from toppling over.

From the top of a hill to the bottom of a shallow valley.

The statues in front of the church date from the middle of the 19th century and are sitting level— yes, the church is leaning that much!

Detail from the photo above— one of those random moments, I've captured a Yellowjacket!

I found it nearly impossible to stand straight inside the church. The floor is level, I’m leaning to compensate for the walls.

Here I’ve made an effort to frame my photo according to the floor and pews. Note the builder's level that our guide left on the floor and note the distance between the Stations of the Cross paintings and the bottom of the organ loft. The paintings were hung to be equidistant from the floor.

The original stone baptismal font from the 15th century church of Saint Martin

Entrance to the organ loft

View from the loft

Up in the bell tower

Above the naves

We went for a walk through the town

Remnants of the tram tracks that led all the way back to the city of Ostrava

The site of the Catholic Worker’s Clubhouse, PRACA

Many places you could see building rubble, orange bricks in this case, through what must have been overgrown gardens

An enameled cross stood here, near the town's hospital.

The only hint that there was a Kunz Tavern at this crossroads is this sign hung on a tree

There was a whole series of these stretching off into the stinging nettles in the woods.

They're German Einmannbunkers, prefabricated and just dropped into place, the Germans placed them at strategic crossroads and buildings. Up to four guards could watch from inside, noting the movements of the people, hoping to spot saboteurs, but mostly-- able to mark from relative safety where unexploded mortar shells and bombs had fallen.

Remains of someone's toilet glimpsed through the trees

I found one of these too. A sign warning me that this is a venting shaft for the nearby coal mine and there is the danger of possible gas explosions.

Better step back a bit ...

A bit of the church roof among the trees. This field was a neighborhood of over a hundred homes.

Ah, and here's the Gabriela coal mine whose venting shaft I'd found earlier— about half a mile earlier. A methane explosion chain in several connected nearby mines killed 235 people in 1895, A massive explosion at the Gabriela Mine in 1924 caused extensive damage to the buildings. The Germans kept it operating all through WW II. The mine was finally shut down in 2000.

I took the long route back to the church, heading around the pond

On these less frequented paths, you could see the foundations of homes

Near the road was this little ruin— perhaps the biggest thing standing from Karvinná besides the church and its outbuildings.

Last shot of the church across the pond. After many less successful attempts to save the church it was scheduled for demolition in 1990, funds were raised and a reconstruction project reinforced the foundations and restored the entire church in 1994-95.

Thanks for stopping by.

This is an open thread.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/29/2196330/-Street-Prophets-Friday-The-Leaning-Church-and-The-Lost-Town-of-Karvinn

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