Overwhelming is the best word I can think of to describe the Italian Chapel on the island of Lambholm, Orkney.

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This Chapel is located alongside the Churchill Barrier which links Mainland to Lambholm and viewed from the outside looks nothing like your traditional Chapel:

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From this angle only the bell tower at the front of the building indicates that this Nissen Hut  is anything other than it looks.  But go through the front door and the view that greets you is both astonishing and overwhelming.

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Everything in this tiny chapel has been made by or painted by Italian POW's during WWII.  The POW's were being kept on Orkney to help build the Churchill Barriers which were built to act as causeways between the southern islands of Orkney and Mainland.  They were housed in Camp 60, on Lambholm, which lacked a Chapel for the soldiers.  So they were given the use of 2 Nissen huts and their work to turn the huts into a place where they could worship began.  Between late 1943 and September 1944 when the POW's left Orkney, they worked on creating the interior out of things they could find around the island.  Domenico Chiocchetti was the force behind the work, although he selected craftsmen from within Camp 60 to help him.  They made everything you can see in the Chapel.  And every piece of art work was painted by Chiocchetti.

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The care taken over the smallest detail was heartwarming - this tiny heart shapedgate stop on the floor could easily be overlooked:

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I could have spent a very long time in this Chapel.  You slowly start to spot things you'd not immediately noticed the more time you spend in the Chapel.  From a distance it looks like the walls are made of brickwork, but look closer and you'll understand the dedication that went into decorating the Nissen hut, as each of the "bricks" are painted on to the walls of the hut.  Care was taken to ensure that the bricks differed slightly in colour, just as they would in a real wall.

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And look more closely at the font, and you'll see it is made out of concrete:

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We made a couple of visits to the Chapel during our stay.  Our second visit coincided with a visit by a mini-bus full of Italian visitors, and while our Italian was not up to much, we were able to understand their excitement at seeing Peggy and Lexie in Mungo, and one of the women very quickly showed me pictures on her phone of her own dog which she'd left behind in Italy, and she told me how much she missed her.  Peggy, of course, lapped up the attention and enjoyed being described as "bella"!

I look forward to a return visit to the Chapel.  It is a place that is rightly cherished by Orcadians.

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