Wooden Tserkva Roofs of the Carpathians

A tserkva is an Eastern-rite wooden church of the Carpathian region, built by Orthodox and Greek Catholic communities. Their roofs are a defining feature: stacked, tiered domes and pyramids of timber, clad together with the walls in wooden shingles. In 2013 UNESCO inscribed 16 of these churches, eight in Poland and eight in Ukraine, as the Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region.

Construction

The tserkvas are built of horizontal logs and date from the 16th to the 19th centuries. They usually have a tripartite plan, with three log chambers in a row, each crowned by an open quadrilateral or octagonal dome or a pyramidal roof. Builders recorded construction dates and carpenters' names in inscriptions on the door lintels.

Wooden shingles cover both roofs and walls. This cladding wears out and, according to UNESCO, has to be replaced every 20 to 30 years.

Regional types

UNESCO groups the listed churches into four traditions, each with its own roof profile:

• Hutsul: Nyzhnii Verbizh and Yasinia in Ukraine.
• Boyko: Smolnik in Poland and Uzhok and Matkiv in Ukraine, on both sides of the border.
• Lemko: Powroźnik, Brunary Wyżne, Owczary, Kwiatoń and Turzańsk in the western Polish Carpathians.
• Halych: Rohatyn, Drohobych, Zhovkva and Potelych in Ukraine, and Radruż and Chotyniec in Poland.

Slovakia

Eight wooden churches in the Slovak part of the Carpathians, two Roman Catholic, three Protestant and three described by UNESCO as Greek Orthodox, built between the 16th and 18th centuries, form a separate UNESCO World Heritage Site and share the shingle-clad timber tradition.

Relationship to other wooden churches

The tserkvas belong to the same Carpathian timber tradition as the Gothic Roman Catholic Wooden Churches of Southern Małopolska and the wooden churches of Maramureș in Romania, but their Eastern-rite plans produce a different roofscape: several separate domes rather than one long, steep roof. See Wooden Churches of Southern Małopolska and Maramureș church roofs.

Care

Because the shingles, the main protection for the timber, last only a few decades, the survival of these churches depends on a continuing supply of suitable wood and of carpenters who can split and lay shingles by hand.