La tradizione costruttiva degli edifici di culto in legno lituani tra XVIII e XIX secolo

Lithuania is situated in a highly forested Northern Europe area and has a variety of wooden buildings. These buildings are still mostly prevalent in villages and towns as well as in large cities, intimately related with landscape and nature, most of which had been realized in 18th and 19th centuries. Among the wooden structures we enumerate the religious buildings, churches and bell towers, rich of historic values, presenting different forms and sizes, a complex design and stratified construction phases. The wooden buildings realized in the 18th century are rich of historical and stylistic references with the other European countries: in these churches we can find the perfect representativeness of “building art rules” and of technical original solutions, used for the realization of structures (foundation, wooden walls, floors, stairs), as well as for finishing and decorative elements (partition walls and ceilings, pavings, etc). The sacred wooden architecture of Lithuania has specific features in each region, with typological and constructive differences; this architecture is characterized by the simplicity of forms in which the constructive elements often coincide with the decorative ones, as the result of a painstaking design of talented technicians and local carpenters. It is an integral part of the landscape of forests and the countryside of Northern and Eastern Europe.