Italian Chapel Orkney
The Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm in Orkney is one of the most moving and most extraordinary small buildings in Britain, a chapel created by Italian prisoners of war interned on the island during the Second World War who transformed two Nissen huts using only the materials available to them into a devotional building of extraordinary beauty and artistic ambition. The chapel was created under the direction of Domenico Chiocchetti, an artist from Moena in the Italian Dolomines, whose skill and the devotion of the prisoner community produced one of the most remarkable acts of creative faith under adversity recorded in any conflict.
The exterior of the chapel retains the outline of the original Nissen hut structure, to which a concrete facade in the form of a small Italian Romanesque church was added, the painted stonework trompe l'oeil columns and pilasters creating an illusion of solid masonry in a building that is essentially two corrugated iron tunnels. The interior, however, creates a completely successful illusion of an elaborate Italian devotional chapel, the painted walls and ceiling simulating brick vaulting, the painted window frames with their stained glass effects and the elaborate decorative programme of the altar area combining to create a space of genuine emotional power.
The chapel remains in use for occasional services and is maintained by the Italian Chapel Preservation Committee, and the visit to this remote Orkney island to see what love, faith and artistic skill can achieve in the most constrained of circumstances provides one of the most genuinely moving heritage experiences in Scotland.