In 1891 the military leader of the Russian Empire, Prince Nikolai Svyatopolk-Mirsky acquired an estate in the town of Mir in the Vilna province. By that time, only ruins remained of the once powerful Radziwill residence of the 16th century. Soon the princely familySvyatopolk-Mirskymoved to Mir and began to put the estate in order.
Not far from Mir Castle a two-story stone palace, a distillery and a park were built. Soon the prince decides to dig a large reservoir between the manor house and the castle. To do this, he needed to destroy the local garden. Local residents refused to cut down the flowering trees, so the prince himself took up the ax. Since then, there has been a legend in Mir that the prince was soon punished for cutting down the garden with premature death, and that from then on people will die in the pond every year until the number of drowned people is equal to the number of cut down trees.
65-year-old Prince Nikolai Svyatopolk-Mirsky died in 1898. His wife, PrincessCleopatra Mikhailovna, decided to build a chapel-burial vault in the village for the entire family ofSvyatopolk-Mirsky. Its architect was Robert Marfeld, who tried to build a building that would fit seamlessly into the existing complex of Mir Castle.
The chapel-tomb of Svyatopolk-Mirsky was built on a hillock under the eastern castle rampart. The chapel turned out to be strict and monumental with elements of neo-Romanesque style and red brick architecture. On the main facade of the chapel, oriented to the south, a hugemosaic panel «Savior Pantocrator»was created. It, following the Byzantine tradition, was made according to a drawing by the artistN. Kharlamov. Not far from the mosaic there is a lead cartouche coat of arms dedicated to St. Nicholas, the patron saint of the Svyatopolk-Mirsky family. The internal space of the tomb consisted of a main hall, intended for family worship, and a crypt for 20 burials located under it.
It took six years to build the chapel-tomb vault of Svyatopolk-Mirsky in Mir. In the 1920s rose bushes were planted in front of the chapel. Soon a large picturesque park formed around the chapel.
The house church of the princes Svyatopolk-Mirsky began to operate in 1910, just in the year of the death of its customer, Princess Cleopatra Mikhailovna. She died in Mir on February 18 of the same year after completing all construction work, as if fulfilling her last duty to her husband and son, whose ashes were transferred here from different places.
During the wars and post-war devastation, the chapel-tomb vault of Svyatopolk-Mirsky was plundered. In the 1970s the cartouche-coat of arms collapsed and was broken. Over the next 30 years, the chapel gradually fell into disrepair and was destroyed. Only in 2004 its reconstruction began: a bell was cast and mosaic icons were installed. A year later, the first symbolic service was held in it in memory of the family of princesSvyatopolk-Mirsky.
