Holy Archangels Wooden Church in Rogoz

The wooden church dedicated to the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel stands in the village of Rogoz, part of the town of Târgu Lăpuș, in the Lăpuș river valley, in the Lăpuș Land (Țara Lăpușului). It was built after the Tatar invasion of 1661, which is recalled by the inscription at the entrance. The List of Historic Monuments dates it to 1661, while tradition places its construction by the community in 1663, on the site of an older church. The church has an unusual plan: a polygonal narthex entered from the south, a rectangular nave and a recessed, seven-sided polygonal altar apse. The façades are decorated with a carved rope motif, the door has an ogee-arched opening, and the eaves rest on brackets ending in horse heads. The roof is asymmetrical, extended to the north to shelter the "table of the ancestors" (masa moșilor) along the north façade. The bell tower over the narthex has an open, projecting belfry and a tall pyramidal roof with corner turrets. The painting was carried out between June and September 1785 by the painters Radu Munteanu of Ungureni and Nicolae Man of Poiana Porcului, according to the inscriptions in the altar and the nave. An inscription in the nave also recalls the Tatar invasion of 1717. In 1834 the gallery at the west end of the nave was built and its parapet painted by Grigorie Bod; at the same time the nave windows were altered and the narthex ceiling and nave vault were repainted. The church was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in December 1999 as part of the "Wooden Churches of Maramureș" and is listed as a historic monument under code MM-II-m-A-04618. The same village also has the eighteenth-century wooden church of St Paraskeva, a historic monument under code MM-II-m-A-04617.