Conservators scan Ukraine’s wooden churches to help preserve them

In a high-ceilinged lab room at the Lviv Polytechnic National University in western Ukraine, a high-tech Leica laser scanner whirred to life. It spun on a tripod as it mapped its surroundings.

“We use it on our trips 3D-scanning Ukrainian wooden churches — 17th and 18th centuries,” said Illia Lytvynchuk, an assistant in the department of architecture and conservation, who demonstrated the tool. 

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainians have been evacuating and safeguarding works of art and museum pieces. But among these objects of vital cultural importance are many buildings and objects that can’t be moved. So, a team of conservators and students are working to scan Ukraine’s unique wooden churches, creating permanent, 3D records of its cultural heritage, in case they’re ever damaged or destroyed. 

Lytvynchuk is part of the team that has been going into the field to ensure there is an architectural record of Ukraine’s wooden religious heritage. Sometimes that work takes them to dangerous areas. One church he hopes to scan is in the Kherson region.

“It’s only five kilometers between Beryslav and the frontline,” he said.

Scanning a church in its entirety can take a full day. The team must set up the Leica dozens of times — once it had to be done as many as 70 times. They usually do it in black and white to save time so they aren’t in dangerous areas for too long.

Once they’re back in the lab, it all must be processed, Lytvynchuk said. On a large screen, he virtually walked through a completed scan of a Ukrainian wooden church, or tserkva. 

“My work is to register this raw data from scan stations,” he said. 

But that’s not where the job ends. Ultimately, the goal is to create detailed architectural plans for every church that’s scanned, according to project leader Mykola Bevz, who is head of the architecture and conservation department. Bevz was part of the team that in 2013 helped get UNESCO World Heritage recognition for 16 wooden churches in the Carpathian region of Ukraine and Poland. That’s just a tiny fraction of Ukraine’s well over 2,000 wooden tserkvas. 

In his office inside the impressive neo-Renaissance and neo-Baroque Lviv Polytechnic building, Bevz pulled up detailed drawings and church scans on his computer.

“So far, we only have models and not all the architectural drawings,” he said. “But this is very important, because if there was a fire in this church now, or a shell hit it, for example, and the Russians destroyed a part of the church, we already know exactly what was destroyed, what it looked like before, and we can use it to rebuild.”

Last year, the team scanned 11 churches, including the nine-domed Tserkva of the Holy Trinity in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region that dates back to 1775. The high-resolution scanning means there’s detailed documentation of the building’s structure — which could potentially be used in legal proceedings — as well as the religious artifacts and artwork inside, in case any are looted.

“We can scan all sorts of monuments even if they’re not on the frontlines,” Bevz said. “Today, the war is going on all over Ukraine. So, it would be good to scan all the most prominent churches.”

More than 140 religious sites have already been damaged in the war. But Bevz says that, so far, all the churches they’ve scanned remain standing.

Bevz’s colleague, Professor Yaroslav Taras, is an architect and ethnologist who has written several books on Ukraine’s sacred wooden architecture, which is full of different styles and elements across different regions.

“Ukrainian sacred architecture is different from all the others because it is one of the markers of Ukrainian identity,” Taras said.

The churches are breathtaking in their craftsmanship. The wooden structures are almost reminiscent of Japanese pagodas, but with huge domes and cupolas. No two are alike. Many contain colorful religious iconography and carved wooden details.

A storage room at the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Museum in Lviv is piled high to the ceiling with such treasures. Standing in the midst of this trove, Father Sebastian Dmytvurh, who works on the preservation of architectural monuments, said he has collected more than 6,000 items from across Ukraine. His specialty is sacred art. 

There is a dark history of the Soviets destroying Ukrainian wooden churches and priests being arrested, he said, adding that Ukrainian sacred architecture and art show the spirituality, history and culture of the country.

“That’s why, in our time, we need to protect sacred artworks very carefully,” he said. “Our libraries, our icons, our churches, because they are unique masterpieces of architecture and art.”

Yuri Yanchyshyn, a conservator of wooden artifacts and a researcher and scholar, has been volunteering with the project. He recalled being “dumbfounded” the first time he entered a wooden tserkva. The churches are an example of vernacular, or folk architecture, he said, built by local parishioners and craftsmen. Many have no nails and are held together with either pegs or mortise and tenon joinery.  

“These churches are distinguished by their tripartite, which means three sections design,”  Yanchyshyn said. “And they have varied, and in some cases, very bold architectural features, especially when the bell towers are incorporated into the structure of the church itself.”

Art and architecture professor Carolyn Guile studies wooden vernacular architecture in the region. She’s also the president of the nonprofit, Red Arch Cultural Heritage Law & Policy Research, that donated the scanner to Lviv Polytechnic. According to Guile, it’s a shame these spectacular churches aren’t better-known around the world — but she said there’s a reason for it.

“Where does this region fit into specializations in academia?” she said. “It hasn’t even risen to the surface. Until fairly recently, of many of these departments and programs that purport to work on or showcase this area of the world, it’s often been done through the lens of how these relate to Russian history.”

She added that these churches are more than just physical marvels. They’re places of community, fixtures in the fabric of Ukrainians’ daily lives.

“It’s important to understand cultural heritage in general is more than just a kind of static repository of human activity,” she said. “These are living things.”

The team is working on scanning another 25 churches by year’s end.