Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Wooden Churches # 7 - Korejovce, Slovakia

This small church dedicated to the Protection of the Mother of God sits on a hill in the centre of the village of Korejovce in north-eastern Slovakia. It was originally built in 1764, though today only some parts of the structure and the interior are still original.
The church has a typical Greek-Catholic style of a tower and two tent roofs rising above a three-room floor plan. The tent roof over the nave and the gabled roof over the sanctuary are topped by shingled onion domes with wrought iron crosses. The highest cross is placed above the entrance door, which must face west according to tradition. The roof is covered with intricate hand-made wooden shingles. In the interior the 18th-century iconostasis is only partly original, but the remaining section has been beautifully restored.

In front of the church near the road is a separate wooden bell tower with a shingle roof. It contains three bells which were cast in 1769, 1771 and 1835, and the bells are decorated with images of the Holy Family, a cross and a pattern of oak leaves. Since 1968 the church has been a protected national cultural monument. The church and bell tower both underwent major repairs in 2002, and new wooden shingles and siding were added in 2008.

The keys to the church are kept by a family who live in a house across the road and a few doors down. They are willing to open the church to let visitors see the interior but they will expect you to leave a donation (about 2 Euros is enough).
Many local buses from the nearby town of Svidník stop in the village of Hunkovce on the main road to the Polish border, and from there it is a walk of about 2 kilometres north on a small sideroad to reach the church in Korejovce.

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