Holy Archangels Wooden Church in Șurdești

The wooden church dedicated to the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel stands in the village of Șurdești, Șișești commune, in the Chioar Land (Țara Chioarului). According to Wikipedia and the literature cited there, it was built in 1721 by the village's Greek Catholic community under the direction of the master carpenter Ion Macarie, from mountain oak; the List of Historic Monuments, however, dates it to 1766. The total height of the church is 54 metres; the figure of 72 metres found online is an error. The church has a rectangular plan with a porch and a polygonal altar apse. The roof has a double eave all round, and the windows are cut in ogee arches. The entrance porch rises on two levels, with two rows of superimposed arcades. The tower starts from the narthex, and a carved rope-twist band runs around the church. The crosses on the church carry a crescent, and the windows between the narthex and the nave were cut only in 1932. The mural painting, executed on wood, was made at the end of the eighteenth century by several painters, the best known being Ștefan Zugravul of Șișești, and shows Baroque influence, especially on the iconostasis. The narthex shows the Last Judgement and the Incredulity of Thomas, the nave vault the Holy Trinity and scenes from the Apocalypse, and the nave walls Jacob's Ladder and the Ascension of the Prophet Elijah. The interior, paved with stone slabs, keeps a staircase carved from a single oak trunk and a carved wooden chandelier. The church was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in December 1999 as part of the "Wooden Churches of Maramureș". The church complex is a historic monument under code MM-II-a-A-04769 and includes the church (MM-II-m-A-04769.01) and the funerary monuments in the churchyard (MM-IV-m-A-04769.02), among them sarcophagus-shaped stone tombs. In the upper part of the village there is a second, smaller wooden church, brought from a neighbouring village in the 1930s (MM-II-m-B-04768).