Church of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Church of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Bukovets, Khust District, is the “upper” church of a village that by the mid-eighteenth century already possessed two sanctuaries. Recorded as an old church in the visitation of 1750, it was rebuilt and slightly enlarged in 1808 but otherwise remained largely unchanged, preserving the character of a nineteenth-century parish church. The church stands in the centre of the village within a fenced former churchyard, while to the north a separate two-tier bell tower with a widely projecting lower roof tier forms part of the ensemble. The building belongs to the Zakarpattian school of vernacular sacred architecture and to the group of three-log-built-unit churches with a tall Baroque bell tower and upper roofed structures, in which the western and central units are surrounded by a gallery. It is a three-part wooden church with one upper roofed structure, built on a concrete foundation and covered partly with shingles and partly with sheet metal. The west entrance is reached through a front gallery on carved posts; an encircling pent roof surrounds the whole body. Above the narthex rises an upper gallery with arched openings and a Baroque bell tower crowned by a dome and enclosed lantern bearing the Christogram “ІСХС”. Inside, the nave is barrel-vaulted, the apse has a similar ceiling, and a solea marks the transition before the iconostasis. The church is especially notable for its complex artistic furnishing: a carved and gilded altar kiot, a painted side altar, and a remarkable interior assembled from two iconostases, including carved Royal Doors, multiple local and festal icons, and upper tiers that combine material from different churches and periods into one highly unusual but historically meaningful ensemble.