Tserkva Complex – Greek-Catholic Tserkva of Entrance to the Temple of Our Most Holy Lady

In the vicinity of the brick classicist Greek Catholic Tserkva of Entrance to the Temple of Our Most Holy Lady from 1842 in Prałkowce we can see an interesting landmark of wooden architecture – a belfry from the late 1500s.

Reconstructed in 1967, the belfry is a post-and-frame structure with oblique walls, comprising a suspended pseudo-chamber with an open gallery. It is covered with a pyramidal roof with a four-pitched bulbous turret topped with an iron cross. The walls and the roof are clad with shingles. The foundation is covered with a skirt roofing. A similar roof can be seen below the top chamber.

The brick tserkva was built owing to Eustachy Drużbacki who, during a fire in 1840 asked people trying to save the old church to help him extinguish the fire in his forest. Two years after the fire, he built the large tserkva, which years later, after the Ukrainians were resettled from here in the 1940s, was transformed into the Roman Catholic parish church of Our Lady of Zbaraż. Nowadays the church is owned by Michaelite Fathers. The high altar holds a painting of Our Lady of Częstochowa from the 1500s, created on a copper plate; it is said that King John III Sobieski prayed in front of it.

On top of a hill, south-west of the village there is an artillery fort GW VII “Prałkowce", part of the outer ring of the Fortress of Przemyśl.

Photo: Krystian Kłysewicz

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