Valea Stejarului Church
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Year built: 1630
Location: Valea Stejarului (Valley of the Oak) it is about 10 km from Sighetu Marmaţiei and 5 km from Vadu Izei by a small local road, in the valley of a small branch of the Iza River, the Valea Porcului.
Summary: The church of St. Parasceva is a smallest (4 m wide and 8 m long ) and the oldest church that exist in Maramureş.
The shape of the church was modified, though, around 1780. Originally, the chancel apse was rectangular, and a continuation of the main body of the church, but at that point it was remade as polygonal and narrower than before.
Also, originally there was no bell tower and no porch on the west façade. The tower raised above the pronaos is very short, and doesn’t give the building the graceful silhouette so typical of the churches of the region. The parapet of the tower is decorated with twisted rope, and the consoles supporting the small tower terrace are carved. A unitary roof with single eaves covers the church, but over the chancel the roof ridge is lower.
There are small window openings cut out of the width of the beams. They are of different shapes, such as crosses, rectangles and rhomboids, and are placed asymmetrically on the façades. They are found only in the naos and chancel, while the small pronaos is dark. In the pronaos and the chancel, there are flat ceilings, but the naos is covered with a barrel vault.
There are some slight traces of the original mural paintings on the interior walls. A Ukrainian of Poland called Hapka Simion possibly painted them in 1809.
