Lutheran Church / Kameňany, Slovakia

The church, originally dedicated to the Hungarian king St. Ladislaus, was built on the small ridge in the centre of the village in the middle of the 13th century, and it has Romanesque foundations. It is a single nave church with a semi-circular apse, an added southern tower and a northern sacristy. Some scholars assumed, that the apse was originally part of a big Romanesque rotunda, which was later connected to more recent nave, but this theory has been refuted. The early gothic southern portal is remarkable. The actual shape of the church was affected by overhauls in the 17th century, when the nave was vaulted and windows were rebuilt in baroque and classicist style. The brick bell-tower was built around 1800 in the church complex.

The fresco paintings in the church are from the first half of the 14th century and from the 15th century. One detail of one fresco became the logo of the church. It is a fresco of a Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (Metercia), which we can find in the choir in the northern part of the nave. There is also a Holy Virgin in mandorla and the depiction of the Adoration of the Kings. Other interesting paintings are monumental figures of Hungarian kings St. Ladislaus, St. Stephen and the prince St. Emeric.

On the opposite side of the road is standing a significant neoclassical building of a school, nowadays used as the municipal office. This setup in the centre of the once an important settlement gave us an idea to study the possibilities of recultivation of the close surroundings of the church with a help from the local community.

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