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Æonis proudly presents its second contest entry, this time a baroque church for the Monumental Temple contest. Flo and Steve sacrificed a lot of their time to please your eyes with this magnificent building. We wish best entertainment and would be very glad to receive tons of feedback!

The church for the Archangel of Water, Fleuviel, was already built in 1256 as the second church in the uprising trading city Lucrécy. The original building was based on early gothic layouts with two towers at the entrance and one in the nave center with a bell in it. To that time its lot almost bordered the city wall. It was funded by the new settled merchants as a House of Heavenly Lord Cadriel on the newly built district of the city at the western side of the river Violaine.

Due to the growing influence of the bourgeoisie and the rising number of citizens, the church had to be extended. This renovation happened in 1314 where a cloister was added to the eastern façade and the whole building got overhauled. The small windows were extended, the wooden ceiling was replaced by stone ribbed vaults, a rose window above the entrance was built and the tower facades got rebuilt with more decorations.

The last renovation happened in 1536, when Lucrécy already became new capital of Castaire. At this time the city experienced a boom in population and importance, so it got extended heavily and many new institutions settled down on the former little merchant city in the country of Chastain. Many older constructions got rebuilt or renovated and also the Church of Fleuviel got a facelift. Many decoration elements got replaced by more splendid ones and the building got extended with a renaissance side wing at the western façade and new interior like a new altar and a whole new library for the clerics in the front tower.

With the new national parliament and ministries in the city and even the imperial family moving to Lucrécy, the city had to focus on building more representatively as it has to symbolize for the whole nation, many older buildings near the new city center got rebuilt just as this church. Due to the fact that there was no way to extend the church even further with another wing without losing all aesthetics, the planners decided to demolish the old church and to build a new baroque construction on the remaining fundaments. This new church is what you see here, almost a central structured building with two towers at the front to remind of the old building and to fit better on the fundaments. Causing the fact that the building was planned to settle on the old catacombs, they are still preserved and the evolution of this building can be tracked on them.

As the city got further extended to the west side, the city wall had to be grinded and rebuilt far away. The houses once leaning on it had to be demolished and got replaced by a main avenue. Due to this act, the location of the church got highly enhanced and so the simple stairs leading to the church had to be renewed too. A symmetrical system of stairs and platforms were build, the graveyard got restructured and even a statue of Fleuviel was added at a front basin.

The building itself consists of a rotunda with three towers at the sides of it and an entrance wing with two larger towers topped by onion roofs and a volute gable between them. In front of the entrance is a vestibule located and a colorful rose window above it. The towers are based on a 12 edged ground floor and culminate in an open colonnade where the bells are, little gables in the top roof and lanterns at the peak. The three towers at the side of the rotunda are decorated playfully, the central dome has a remarkable curvature and three rows of gables at the dome to embrace the center of the hall with as much light as possible. The dome is crowned by another huge lantern.

The inside is dominated by marble in the colours blue and rosé. The entrance hall and the ceiling of the lower colonnade are cassette ceilings in white and rosé colours, the ceilings at the upper colonnade and the entrance wing are barrel vaults with blue as main colour. The dome is completely rosé and decorated with golden stripes at the eight edges topped by a small dome sitting on top of the huge one with light bays for the upper skylights. The main hall is dominated by its splendid floor patterns and the altar in the middle of the northern side, which is still the renaissance one from the old church, and a pulpit at the left side.

In the ground floor of both towers are separate praying spaces for local merchant families which once paid for the old church and its renovations. At the first floor of the western tower is the library located, with a book collection gifted by the merchant Charles Morel in 1538. Above it are rooms for the clerics to study and to make exclusive handwritten copies of books. At the first floor of the eastern tower is the bureau of the church’s provost and one floor higher lies his private chamber. Just above the entrance hall is the organ, which is also still the one from the older church.

The catacombs are still the same as they were before, just the entrance to them now lies at the back face of the church at the graveyard one floor below. The terrain surrounding the church is completely different from the original. The stairs leading to the church got extended with various platforms and the spaces once occupied by houses are now filled with green space. Even the graveyard got completely redone, thus many graves had to be temporarily displaced.

This new church counts as one of the most beautiful ones in Lucrécy and its catacombs and graveyard are resting places for many important people of the early history of the city.