Wooden Architecture

     For a very long time, wood has been the basic construction material, readily available and easy to shape. Now, in prospect, also very valuable. Those, who, in the old times, called the present–day Podkarpackie lands their home, created many very special objects using wood, often unique in whole Europe and the world. You could even call them “the Pearls of Wooden Architecture”. However, wood is also an impermanent material, which is why there are fewer and fewer wooden constructions in our cultural landscape. This is why you are welcome to visit the places of the Podkarpackie, where you can still admire the wooden relics, sacral and laic, and in some places, quite prominent fragments of wooden buildings of small villages. This is where, throughout centuries, the Byzantium–Russian and Latin influences mixed with those ethnically Polish and ethnically Russian. The peregrination will surely take you into a different world, where the laws of the slowly perishing Never Land remain in force.
     The magic of the wooden Catholic and Orthodox churches is a kind of catharsis for the modern man, and their majesty strike with the great humility of their constructors, who honored the Almighty with their talent and knowledge. In every temple, you can see the signs of the struggle with wood, the strenuous fight to shape it into the forms born out of imagination, and the final effect, which was and is impressive and delighting.

We especially recommend the most valuable sacral relics of art. Two of those are so unique; they have been registered on the UNESCO list of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage:

• the church in Haczów from XV century, the oldest wooden church in Poland, and, at the same time, the largest wooden Gothic church in the world (inside there are polychrome fragments from XV century); surrounded with wooden skirts, on the inner walls there is a unique chronicle of local floods in the XVII–XIX century time period, caused by the Wisłok River.
  

  

• the presbytery complex in Blizne, and the wooden church constructed in XVI century, one of the most valued examples of medieval wooden architecture; it consists of the church with a unique polychrome inside, depicting the so–called “Pleb Bible”, the old presbytery, granary, an old parish school and a barn.
  

  

and

• an Orthodox church by the Monastery in Ulucz from 1510 – the oldest wooden Orthodox church in Poland
  
• Lemko Orthodox churches in: Krempna (1778), Świątkowa Wielka (1757), Pielgrzymka (the end of XVIII century), Komańcza (1802), Rzepedź (1824), Turzańsk (1801–1803)
  
• Boyko Orthodox churches in: Smolnik on San (1791), Równia (early XVIII century), from Rosolin and Grąziowa in the Heritage park in Sanok, in Bystre by Ustrzyki Dolne (1902),
  
• the Orthodox church in Gorajec (1586)
  
• the Orthodox church in Chotyniec (1600)
  
• the gate Orthodox church in Dobra Szlachecka from XVII century – the only one of its type in Poland – an example of locating a temple over a gate of a fortification
  
• the defensive Orthodox church complex in Radruż (the end of XVI century)
  
• Catholic churches in: Lutcza (1464), Iwonicz (1464), Osiek (XV century), Połomia (the end of XV century), Brzeziny (around 1500), Lubla (XV/XVI century), Rogi (1600), Ulanów (1643), Trzcinica (II half of XVI century), Cmolas (1674), Średnia Wieś (II half of XVI century), Jaćmierz (XVII century), Bachórzec (1760 – Baroque furnishings), Krzeszów (1727), Kosina (1737), Stubno (XVIII century)
  

     When penetrating the wooden constructions in the Podkarpackie province, it is impossible to omit the places, where the old small town buildings are preserved. A very special place is Pruchnik with buildings dating as far as XVIII century and the I half of XIX century. They surround the market square on the original layout from the turn of the XIX and the XX century; the buildings in Mrzygłód, or the building complexes in: Jaśliska with wooden buildings from mid XIX century and the turn of XIX and XX century and in Kalwaria Pacławska with the undercut buildings from the II half of XIX century.
    You can admire all of these wooden architecture relics, and much more, by traveling the Podkarpackie Wooden Architecture Tourist Route.