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The Music of Wood

Wooden catholic churches

Windmills and water-mills

krainian wooden churches are beautiful and authentic monuments which probably express national architecture features to the utmost; they don't deserve the neglect that can be seen nowadays. Kozak churches of Left Bank Ukraine, houses of worship in Podillya, wooden gothic masterpieces in Zakarpattya that have no analogues in the world - all these are known only to a limited circle of professionals and amateurs remaining out of sight of home tourism and society in general.
Fire, water, deliberate demolishing because of inter-denominational controversies, barbaric facing with tin - how many monuments have been lost and how many more will be lost due to human negligence? The first step on the way to the rescue of wooden churches is breaking the information vacuum. In fact, that is what we are doing while gathering, structuring and disseminating information on wooden architecture monuments and problems of their conservation.

How and why the Wooden Churches of Ukraine website is being created:

The main trend of our project (you can read about it in more detail here) is further development of this website which is directed in the first place toward our colleagues, amateurs of local lore who like to travel around Ukraine; that's why the website is structured on the geographical principle (modern administrative division).
Hopefully, the website will also be useful for experts who are also expected to offer us their moral and informational assistance. Some of them are already cooperating with us.

The main components of the website:

- photoarchive
consisting of photos taken in expeditions, obtained from archives, given by our friends or borrowed from literature sources. Every guest can enlarge the website photoarchive with his or her own photos. Authors are mentioned necessarily!
Ideally, we'll have a complete photocatalogue of existing wooden churches.

- web bibliography and e-books collection
Every page dedicated to a town or a village will contain information collected in expeditions, references to other web resources and literature sources. Our base is a widely known in narrow circles four-volume catalogue "The Monuments of Town-planning and Architecture of the Ukrainian SSR" (Kyiv: 1983-86); unfortunately, no more complete edition has been published so far. A separate important part of the website will be a professionally elaborated web bibliography; all collected literature will be gradually digitized. We'll appreciate adding your own materials or providing literature for copying.

- photogalleries, pictures, popular articles
What we don't really mean is our website being boring or dull. That's why any subjective information will be highly appreciated! Thematic photo collections, genre snapshots, drawings, as well as travel notes and comments made by our authors and correspondents will be presented without fail. We also plan to prepare skeleton maps and object affixments for travellers.

- forum
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