Exhibition to show old Romanian wood churches in Krakow

18/2/2010

Sacred Space, Romanian Wood Churches Exhibition showing pictures of old worship places with a specific architecture, impressive through their simple lines and the decorations carved by skilful craftspeople, will open in Krakow, Poland, on March 1-21, part in a project of the County Center for Conservation and Promotion of Traditional Culture, in Cluj (central Romania).

Made of fir-wood, erected on oak soles and stone basements, and roofed with shingle. The wood churches have specific steeples, with a gallery of vaults, most of them with four small towers at the base of the spires. They are rectangular-shaped, have a porch on the southern side and their naves and narthexes are adorned with beautiful religious paintings or icons. Most of them are listed as historical monuments.

The wood churches in Bagaciu (1700), Badeni (1765), Berchiesu (1765), Bica (1765), Aghiresu (1780), Apahida (1806), or that in Belis village, moved from Giurcuta de Jos, a locality that partially gets flooded after the building of the weir at Fantanelele Belis, are all genuine jewels that have been braving the centuries. The old wood church in Gilau, no longer exists, but a engraving by Alois Schonn shows its whole beauty.

The exhibition in Krakow is part in a series of eight cultural projects to be developed this year, in partnership with the Malopolska region, in Poland twin of the Cluj County. Krakow, in its turn, is also to show pictures of wood churches in the exhibition due at the Octavian Goga County Library, in Cluj, on March 15-26.

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