Poland and Ukraine Seek to Include Wooden Churches of Carpathians in UNESCO List

Ministers of Culture of Poland and Ukraine seek to include the wooden churches of the Ukrainian and Polish regions of the Carpathians to the list of UNESCO World Heritage, the Polish Radio reported with reference to the Ministry of Culture of Poland on January 9.

The Minister of Culture of Poland Bohdan Zdrojewski prepared and passed a proposal in this regard to Ukraine’s Minister of Culture Mykhailo Kulyniak. The Polish official also asked to draw up appropriate documents for the Center of UNESCO World Heritage in Paris according to the appropriate procedures.

The joint proposal is to be prepared by the end of January of this year. This will start the procedure to include the churches in the list of UNESCO in 2012, reported the Ministry of Culture. The proposal concerns 16 objects of which 8 are located in the Pidkarpatsky and Malopolsky Voivodstvo of Poland and another 8 are located in the Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Transcarpathian regions of Ukraine.

The oldest wooden churches preserved in the Polish and Ukrainian Carpathians date back to the 15th-16th centuries. Their uniqueness is indicated, in particular, by the diversity of styles and forms, which at the same time constitutes wholeness. The wooden sacral architecture has become the determining feature of the cultural originality of the Polish and Ukrainian Carpathians, reported UNIAN-Religions.