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Historic place

Tserkva of St Michael the Archangel, Turzańsk

Turzańsk, Turzańsk, Podkarpackie

Five domes, fifteen hand-embroidered banners, and the only UNESCO World Heritage wooden church within an hour's drive of Rymanów.

📅 1803–present🏛️ ChurchStill hereBuilt 1803
Open on the mapSlide back to 1803
Tserkva of St Michael the Archangel, Turzańsk, Turzańsk, Turzańsk, Podkarpackie
Tserkva of St Michael the Archangel, Turzańsk (UNESCO) · Henryk Bielamowicz, CC BY-SA 3.0 PL via Wikimedia Commons

The story

Built in 1801–1803 and enlarged in 1836 in the eastern Lemko tradition, this is a single-nave log structure clad in vertical boarding, with octagonal domes over the main sections and five dome-topped turrets carrying mock lanterns, bulbous finials and forged crosses. The iconostasis was made in 1895 by Josyp Bukowczyk, the polychrome dates to 1898, and the church holds around fifteen hand-embroidered processional banners. Its confession followed the politics: Orthodox in origin, then Greek Catholic, then Roman Catholic from 1947 to 1961 after Operation Vistula emptied the surrounding villages, and Orthodox again since 1963. On 21 June 2013 it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of sixteen components of "Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region in Poland and Ukraine" (ref. 1424), eight of them in Poland. About 30 km southeast of Rymanów.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

It is the only one of Poland's eight UNESCO tserkvas anywhere near Rymanów; the rest are 50–200 km away.
The building has held Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic worship, and is Orthodox again today.
UNESCO classes it a "western Lemko type" despite its eastern-Lemko construction tradition.

Connected places

Cerkva of the Protection of the Mother of God, Komańcza (reconstruction)

Komańcza, Podkarpackie
Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church

Explore the full web of connections on the map.

Nearby history

Cerkva of the Protection of the Mother of God, Komańcza (reconstruction)

Komańcza · 6.2 km away
The forests around Rymanów grew the timber that rebuilt a church thirty kilometres away.

Sanok Castle and Historical Museum (Zamek Królewski / Muzeum Historyczne)

ul. Zamkowa 2 · 22.3 km away
A Renaissance royal castle holding Poland's finest Carpathian icon collection — and the world's largest hoard of the cou

Museum of Folk Architecture, Sanok (Muzeum Budownictwa Ludowego)

ul. Aleksandra Rybickiego 3 · 23.6 km away
Thirty-eight hectares of relocated Carpathian villages, assembled to save the material culture of peoples the 20th centu

Church of the Translation of the Relics of St Nicholas, Królik Wołoski (ruin)

Królik Wołoski · 27.3 km away
A village with a population of zero, and a river-stone church slowly coming apart above its own graveyard.

Villa Leliwa (Willa Leliwa)

ul. Stanisława Wyspiańskiego 2 · 27.9 km away
Poland's greatest Art Nouveau painter is said to have frescoed a sunflower in its attic, and wartime medics painted over

Rymanów-Zdrój Spa (Uzdrowisko Rymanów-Zdrój)

ul. Parkowa 8 · 28.1 km away
A countess spent years hunting for mineral water on her own land, and the springs she found in 1876 built an entire town

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Sourceshttps://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1424/