Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Dilove, Rakhiv District, is an important Hutsul church that probably dates from around 1750 and stands on the gentle northern slope of the Malyi Poderei tract in the historic centre of the village. Local tradition recalls an earlier sanctuary on the cemetery slope above the present site, while eighteenth-century visitations already mention a functioning parish church in Trybushany that required repairs. The surviving church continued in use until the Soviet period, when it was closed and converted into a local history museum, before being returned to the Greek Catholic community and restored in 2006–2008. Architecturally, the building belongs to the Hutsul school of vernacular sacred architecture. It is a three-part wooden church with one upper roofed structure, a polygonal apse, and a timber-framed bell tower above the west entrance. The church stands on a concrete foundation and is enclosed by a wooden fence on the site of the former cemetery. A front gallery on plain posts leads to the west entrance, while a gabled canopy and an encircling pent roof unify the outer volume. The main body is covered by a tent roof with an open front gable and a three-sloped roof above the apse; the tower is crowned by an octagonal cupola and a three-barred cross. Inside, the church preserves a spacious narthex, a central nave with a barrel-vaulted ceiling and tiered setbacks, and a polygonal apse with a beamed flat ceiling. Most historic decoration is lost, and the present iconostasis is modern, though several overpainted apostolic icons survive as witnesses to the earlier furnishing.