St. Nicholas Church, Bodružal, Slovakia

St. Nicholas Church is a wooden Greek Catholic Church of the Eastern Rite situated in a village Bodruzal in Svidnik district in the Presov region. It is registered on the UNESCO's World Heritage List as part of the Wooden Churches of the Slovak part of the Carpathian Mountain Area.

The church is part of a unique urban entity situated on an elevated place in the village centre. Apart from the church it is made up of a separate bell tower, an adjacent cemetery and a wooden enclosure with a shingle roof and an entrance gate covered by a conical and an onion shape roof.

The church itself is a prototype church of the so-called Lemko type. It dates back to 1658 and belongs to the oldest wooden sacral buildings of the Eastern Rites in Slovakia.

The church has three towers. The construction is made out of logs, in a shape of three squares arranged on the same axis oriented from east to west. The exterior is decorated with vertically laid planks. The logs were also used on the construction of imitation tiered corbelled arches (of a truncated pyramid) in the sanctum and the nave. The arrangement of individual parts of the church represents the Holy Trinity. The church is situated on the highest hillock of the village. With its location it is higher than the rest of the buildings and houses.

The roof is made out of shingles. The tent roof above the presbytery and the nave is finished with a short square structure, to which conical bodies are attached to. To them baroque onion-like little roofs are fixed, finished with small shingle conical heads set with wrought iron crosses.

References:

Wikipedia

User Reviews

vladimir dvojak (5 months ago)
Ok

Jozef Gargalovic (2 years ago)
beautiful historic wooden church

Dusan Mojzis (2 years ago)
The church is nice but the lady inside is an icon of unhospitality, she jumped us as we just entered almost screaming that we should be paying charity 2 euros each and right away and how come we didn't pay it already. Outrageous. We told her, that we are used to different kind of welcoming tourists and that we'll gladly pay entrance fee but her behavior is terrible. She said that there is no entrance fee but we need to pay charity or else.. So we turned around and said bye. There are better wooden churches around with much nicer people. Not recommended.

Jaroslav Karasek (3 years ago)
Great little old church

Tono Jazdec (3 years ago)
UNESCO church. Please, pay 2EUR/adults and 1EUR/children to the church to keep it in this beutiful state. It really worth.

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In the 9th century, a Norse woman was buried at the site in a stone-lined grave with two bronze brooches and a sickle and knife made from iron. Other finds suggest that Norse men were buried here too.

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