Today Vasyuchyn is a small village with about one thousand inhabitants. The settlement had urban status and was one of the famous craft centers in the past. There was a quarry here, where high-quality natural alabaster stone was mined and processed. Vasyuchyn alabaster had a snow-white color and was famous as a beautiful material for decorating walls, carving sculptures, tombstones and decorative architectural details. Actually, Vasyuchyn alabaster was called in the 17th century "Ruthenian marble" and products made from it were exported abroad. A small alabaster industry operated here at the beginning of the 20th century. The ancient history of the manufactory is unknown to current residents. In this regard, the publication aims to reveal the history of the settlement and perform a hypothetical reconstruction of its architectural and planning structure at the time of the 17th century. A special task is to determine the location of the former Vasyuchyn alabaster manufactory, whose activities were associated with famous sculptors and entrepreneurs of the late 16th and early 17th centuries - Herman van Hutte and Heinrich Horst. The quarry and workshop for the production of alabaster stone sculptures have probably been operating in Vasyuchyn for a long time, but the Dutch masters are responsible for raising it to a new artistic level.
Vasyuchyn is one of the lost towns of Galicia. In the 14th-17th centuries, it was a private town with a very rich history. Although the history of Vasyuchyn was quite short from 1444 to 1620, its urban structure was developed and did not differ from neighboring settlements with a city rights - Knyahynychi, Khodoriv, Zhuriv, etc. In the western part of the settlement there was a midtown with a small square market square and a church. A feature of Vasyuchyn was that a mill was located next to the market square. The midtown of Vasyuchyn was surrounded by water obstacles on all sides. The water wheel created natural favorable conditions for defense. The system of defensive ramparts covered the midtown from the western and southern sides. Assessing the remains of the ramparts, which have survived only in the western part of the settlement, we attribute them to the bastion system of fortifications of the Old Dutch school. The mid was probably fortified at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, when an alabaster factory operated here. The urban structure of the city belonged to the so-called conjugated type of cities, when the castle and the midtown formed a combined defense system.
Vasyuchyn Castle had two phases of development. The older defensive yard was located on an artificial island in the middle of a swampy Swirzh river valley.The remains of earthen ramparts have survived from this object. The new castle was located in the southern part of the midtown. Unfortunately, no buildings or fortifications have survived from it. A palace complex with a manor house was planned on the site of this object at a later time. Its planning structure reflected in the draft plan of the settlement from 1846. In order to reconstruct the architectural and spatial structure of the castle, which probably had a Renaissance character, it is necessary to conduct deeper historical and cartographic studies. The town of Vasyuchyn in the 16th-17th centuries should be attributed to the conditional artistic capitals of the Renaissance in Galicia. The products of the alabaster workshop exported to the many cities of Eastern and Central Europe. Artistic works made of Vasyuchyn alabaster noted in Kraków, Warsaw, Poznan, Wroclaw, Czarnów, Rymanów, etc. Many works made for local shrines - in the cities of Lviv, Sambir, Felshtyn, Uniw, etc. The revival of the alabaster industry, especially in the direction of using alabaster stone in an artistic aspect, can be the foundation of a new economic progress of the community.
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