Churches & monasteries

Church of Our Lady of Zbarazh in Prałkowce

Prałkowce lie just outside Przemyśl, and on a rise above the village stands the church of Our Lady of Zbarazh — a former Greek Catholic church venerating an image painted on a copper plate in the 16th century. Next to it rises a wooden belfry from the end of the 16th century, a station of the Wooden Architecture Trail.

From church to church

The temple was erected in 1842 with funds from Eustachy Drużbacki, on the site of a wooden church burned four years earlier. After the Greek Catholic population was resettled in 1945–1947, the building passed to Roman Catholics; it was renovated in the 1960s, when a choir loft and a sacristy were added. Today it is cared for by the Michaelite Fathers and serves as a sanctuary.

The image from Zbarazh

The sanctuary takes its name from the image of Our Lady of Zbarazh — a 16th-century copy of the Jasna Góra icon, kept for more than three hundred years in the Bernardine church in Zbarazh. By tradition Jan III Sobieski prayed before it, and Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki endowed it with a silver dress. Until the Second World War the image remained in Zbarazh; today it is set on a metal plate with bas-reliefs of Polish eagles.

The shingle-clad belfry

The wooden belfry of post-and-frame construction dates from the end of the 16th century and was reconstructed in 1967: a tented roof crowned by a bulbous turret, walls and roof covered with shingles. Address: Prałkowce 240; drive from Przemyśl via Krasiczyn, whose castle lies 5.4 km away. Nearby you will also find the Tatar Mound in Przemyśl.