Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel Wooden Church, Plopiș

The wooden church dedicated to the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel stands in the village of Plopiș, Șișești commune, Maramureș County, in the Chioar area, in the Cavnic Valley. The village grew up on the left bank of the Cavnic River, on the southern slope of the Gutâi Mountains, opposite the village of Șurdești, and is first mentioned in documents in 1583. The church was built by the village community between 1796 and 1805, from oak logs joined in the Blockbau system, to replace an older church. It was consecrated on 12 November 1811; the consecration document and 49 coins, one from each founding family, were found in the base of the altar table. The church was repaired in 1901, restored in 1961 with funds from the Directorate of Historic Monuments, and fully restored, architecture and painting, between 2018 and 2021, after which it was consecrated again on 29 May 2021. Its forms and decoration are so close to those of the Șurdești church that both are considered the work of the same builder, Ioan Macarie. The church is 17 m long and 7 m wide, with a rectangular plan, a porch on the west side and a polygonal sanctuary. The nave vault has a trefoil cross-section, the only one of its kind in a wooden church. The porch has a fretwork parapet and scalloped arches, and the bell tower has an open gallery and a tall pyramidal spire with four corner turrets. The interior painting, made in 1811 by Ștefan Zugravul of Șișești, survives in fragments on the nave vault, with the Holy Trinity and scenes from the Apocalypse and the Passion; the same painter decorated the iconostasis, the gallery and the icon on the altar table. The church is a class A historic monument, LMI code MM-II-m-A-04604, dated 1798, and since 1999 it has been part of the UNESCO site "Wooden Churches of Maramureș". It is an Orthodox parish church.