Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel Wooden Church, Breb

The wooden church dedicated to the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel stands in the village of Breb, Ocna Șugatag commune, Maramureș County. The village lies below the Gutâi Mountains, in the Mara-Cosău area, 4 km south of Ocna Șugatag and 3 km north-west of Budești, and is recorded in documents from 1360 under the name Hódpataka, "the village of the beaver stream". The church is used by the village's Greek Catholic community. Tree-ring research in 1997 established that the timber was felled in the winter of 1621-1622, so the church was most likely built in 1622. Some parts of the tower structure were dated to the winter of 1529-1530; the tower comes from an older church in the hamlet of Copăciș, built "before 1531", and it is the only 16th-century wooden tower surviving at a wooden church in Romania. The year 1626, kept in the church records, is associated with the wall painting. In 1864 the church was extended to the east with a narrow transept with two side apses and a polygonal sanctuary, and was painted again. The nave and narthex of 1622 are built of oak logs with flush corner joints. Part of the 1626 wall painting is still visible. The church keeps icons from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a carved vault beam and, beneath the present roof, the old roof. It is part of an ensemble with a churchyard, a cemetery with stone, wooden and iron crosses, a bell tower from 1992 and a parish house. The Holy Archangels ensemble in Breb is a class A historic monument, LMI code MM-II-a-A-04529, dated to the 16th-17th centuries; the church itself has the code MM-II-m-A-04529.01.