{"id":587038,"date":"2026-10-08T23:54:04","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T20:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=587038"},"modified":"2026-10-09T09:06:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T06:06:18","slug":"no-plans-yet-to-restore-lost-murals-in-minsk-s-red-church-what-the-restoration-actually-includes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/no-plans-yet-to-restore-lost-murals-in-minsk-s-red-church-what-the-restoration-actually-includes","title":{"rendered":"No Plans Yet to Restore Lost Murals in Minsk&#8217;s Red Church: What the Restoration Actually Includes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>The funds allocated for the current stage of restoration of the Red Church in Minsk will be used primarily to preserve existing murals and restore stained-glass windows. A full-scale reconstruction of the church&#8217;s historic painted vaults is not included in the project. The Telegram channel <a href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/spadczyna\/16725\">Spadchyna<\/a> drew attention to the details of the project documentation.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, media reports citing tender documents said that all the lost murals in the Church of Saints Simon and Helena were allegedly to be restored during the reconstruction. However, an analysis of the cost estimate shows that large-scale work to recreate the historic decoration is not currently planned.<\/p>\n<p>According to documents published on the public procurement website, the total cost of the restoration work is 849,762.12 rubles. The main expenditure items are as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Restoration of stained-glass windows (5 units) \u2014 42,801.4 rubles.<\/li>\n<li>Removal of later paint layers from stone capitals (14 units) \u2014 198,081.48 rubles (two items in the cost estimate).<\/li>\n<li>Exploratory exposure of historic finishes (20 m\u00b2) \u2014 693.11 rubles.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The initial cost estimate included the restoration of the artistic painting on the ceiling of the worship hall (1 set) for 204,400 rubles. This item was later revised: it was replaced in the project by &#8220;Restoration of Artistic Painting on the Ceiling&#8221; covering an area of 91 m\u00b2 at a cost of 445,150.01 rubles.<\/p>\n<h3>Why Is This Not About &#8220;Recreating What Was Lost&#8221;?<\/h3>\n<p>As the Spadchyna channel notes, an area of 91 square meters is roughly equivalent to a square measuring 9.5 by 9.5 meters. This would not even be enough to cover the murals restored by conservators in the 1990s (and not whitewashed during renovation work in the 2010s). The total area of the church&#8217;s historic vaults where the murals were located is an order of magnitude larger.<\/p>\n<p>The project documentation does indeed contain wording referring to the &#8220;recreation of completely lost fragments of murals,&#8221; which prompted striking headlines in the media. <strong>However, this applies to a very small area \u2014 about 20 square meters.<\/strong> The remaining 91 square meters involve the restoration of existing fragments of the artistic decoration.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"info\"><p><strong>Subscribe to <a href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/cult_front\">Reform.news cultural news<\/a> on Telegram<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The funds allocated for the current stage of restoration of the Red Church in Minsk will be used primarily to preserve existing murals and restore stained-glass windows. A full-scale reconstruction of the church&#8217;s historic painted vaults is not included in the project. The Telegram channel Spadchyna drew attention to the details of the project documentation. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":587039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/6ac8845dbb2f2.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"No Plans Yet to Restore Lost Murals in Minsk\u2019s Red Church: What the Restoration Actually Includes"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142375,142338],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-587038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-news"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587040,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587038\/revisions\/587040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}