Its current appearance was defined in 1885. But there was a fairly similar church there since 1470. That older one was built on the remains of the Byzantine chapel from the 8th century.
This area wasn't inhabited in 1885. The church and the sanctuary were surrounded by forest. The city was about three kilometers away.
The only trees that remain today around the Church of Our Lady of Mercy are cypresses that form a little park and are helping make the walkway that leads to the church entrance more majestic.
The forest isn't far, though. Just behind the busy road that leads out of the city and flows into the highway and this fairytale castle that hosts a Pizzeria and some other commercial activities, there is the large forest park of Shiana.
On the same side of the road, less than fifty meters from the church, you can find supermarkets, storage facilities, and a big scrap yard with hills made of all kinds of metal parts and cars waiting to be dismantled.
It's a busy suburb where trucks constantly come and go, load and unload their trailers.
The above photograph was taken from the parking lot of a supermarket called Konzum. The following shot ...
... taken from the same spot in the large parking lot, shows the upper part of the church tower near the Church of Our Lady of Mercy. You can also see a small fragment of the church's yellow facade hidden behind the neighboring houses and cypresses if you thoroughly explore all the details of this enlargeable picture.
Here I zoomed in a bit more.
Some minutes later, I noticed a mushroom on the narrow stretch of lawn between the parking lot and the road.
This natural little tower is a Conocybe tenera fruiting body. This species grows in all kinds of lawns and meadows and is quite common to find it in urban areas.
In this shot, I used the powerful zoom of my Canon PowerShot SX60 HS camera to bring the details of the church tower very close to my curious eyes. Meanwhile ...
... one of the supermarket employees was working to keep the parking lot clean.
In this photograph, I'm approaching the church through the alley bordered by tall, elegant cypress trees.
It's time to take an up-close look at the church's front facade.
Here you can take a good look at the decorative engravings on the massive wooden door and the stain-glass details of the narrow, elongated windows.
Above the door ...
... there is a relatively small but quite lovely rosette.
A bit higher, there is a cross that lets a bit of outdoor light through four narrow elongated holes.
Above all that stuff, there is an elegant tower with the year in which the church as we see it today was consecrated engraved in one of its segments. That year is 1886.
In the park near the church, there is this thing that looks like an outdoor altar of the sanctuary to me.
I have learned a few things about sacral architecture through my art-oriented education, but since I have never practiced any kind of religion, I don't know the name and purpose of everything that can be found in or around churches and sanctuaries.
One thing that I can tell you though, is that I'm the type of atheist who enjoys and admires artistic products of religions very much.
There was only one pot on that thing I'm calling an outdoor altar ...
... and in that lonely pot ...
... only one flower was growing a few days ago when I visited the park around the church after buying some stuff in the nearby supermarket.
Here you can take a good look at the church tower in its entirety.
This is the rear side of Our Lady of Mercy in Shiana. The light blue detail in the lower left corner of the picture is something that looks like small roadside chapels I encounter on country lanes between small towns and villages all around the region.
Here you can see the entire thing.
Here you can see the front of what I'll call "a Madonna cabinet."
The milk-white color of the petrified lady, combined with the celestial blue of the background sprinkled with golden stars ...
... looks great to me. Dry plants in yellow pots are a nice addition to the composition locked inside the cabinet.
On the rear side of the - let's call it a mini chapel, I saw some mysterious symbols. One of those is probably made of the letters M and A. I mean, this stuff looks mysterious to me but I'm pretty sure that is quite normal for some or many other people. That's all I can tell you about the above photograph.
Here I zoomed in on the relatively small window on the rear facade of the church. In the following photograph ...
... I zoomed in a bit more.
This place was a goal of seasonal pilgrimages from all parts of the region. The nearby supermarkets congregate pilgrims from the city and surrounding villages every day.
Behind the church, at the end of a narrow road, only about twenty or thirty meters from Our Lady of Mercy ...
... there is a house with three tall wooden crosses in its yard. The crucified Jesus is still hanging on the one in the center.
The two thieves who left their place on the cross probably hold some good position in the city administration, or who knows, maybe even in the Catholic Church's current hierarchy.
This building was a small monastery until 1971.
At first sight, it looked to me that E.T. the extraterrestrial is mentioned in the white letters incorporated into the rusted gate, but nope ...
... it's a Latin inscription that means "peace and good."
So yeah, peace and good folks - this post is over.
AS ALWAYS HERE ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK.
