ARCHITECTURE
wooden architecture — research, maintenance and restoration

The chapel of three Sanctifiers is built of logs on a high ground floor (a basement). The solid structure of the chapel consists of two rectangular frameworks, joint together wall to wall on the same foundation. The eastern part, which is a chapel itself, is covered with a double-sloping symmetrical gable roof with a cross on top. The western part is wider and higher; in the center of it there belfry which consists of an octagonal log framework placed on top of a quadrangular one and is covered with a high tent-like roof with a dome and a cross on it. The rest of the log construction is covered with one-sloping roof to the North and to the South. Four angles of the square belfry are covered with small two-sloping roofs made of so-called ‘red batten’. From the West, right in front of the main entrance, there is a gallery on consoles, to which leads a ladder. Its two flights are separated by a platform, which supports massive notch-boards of the upper flight. The gallery is located asymmetrically and is displaced to closer to the northern facade. The ladder flights face the northern facade, too, and are covered, as well as the gallery itself, with one-slope roof.

The walls are cut out of round logs according to the traditional method with the logs’ ends protruding from the edges of the walls in the corners (‘v oblo’) and are not planked. The octahedron of the belfry is done with crossed cut logs fixed with no logs’ ends protruding from the walls (‘v lapu’), with the framework expanding in its upper part. The eastern facade of the chapel is ‘blind’ (i.e., it has no windows), but the room for prayers has two windows on both the northern and southern sides, while the antechurch is lit through the windows on the southern and western facades. These windows have no frames. The western part of the framework is separated by two parallel inner walls. They divide the ground floor into three chambers, which could have been used as storages. Three doors on the western façade, that are situated under the gallery, lead to these three chambers. The main floor of the chapel is separated by the inner walls into the anteroom (‘seni’) in the middle; the antechurch from the South, which can an entered into from the anteroom; and a chamber with the ladder leading to the belfry from the North. There are two separate entrance doors from the gallery, leading to the chapel and to the belfry.

All the roof slopes of the Chapel of Three Sanctifiers are made of so-called ‘red batten’ with spike-shaped ends of the planks. The decorative elements of the porch and belfry roofs, as well as the fascia boards are decorated with similar fretwork with contour semi-circles and reach-through holes in the center, separated by two triangles. The belfry has twin pillars. The outer one is decorated with volume carving, similar to the carving of the lower porch pillars. These two pyxidate elements are separated by an insertion with carved triangular pattern around it. The rails of the gallery and the ladders are made of solid planks according to the traditional ‘fish-bone pattern’. The consoles of the gallery are made of three inner walls logs of different length, protruding from the outside walls, with their ends shaped like hooks.