8 Kolobrzeska, Bydgoszcz, Poland
Protection of Our Most Holy Lady Church in Owczary is a Gothic, wooden church located in the village of Owczary from the seventeenth century. It is one of the oldest Lemko churches. In 2013, it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List along with other wooden churches in Poland and Ukraine. The church is located on the wooden architecture route of the Lesser Poland Voivodeship. The church was renovated many times, and the last major renovation took place in the 1980s. At that time, the shingled roofing of tent walls and roofs was restored, and all restoration activities were awarded with the international Europa Nostra award. The interior is covered with a polychrome from 1938. Inside, there is an eighteenth-century iconostasis painted in blue, red and gold, decorated with openwork columns with a vine leaf motif. The icons in the iconostasis were made by the artist Jan Medycki, who created images of saints for both tserkvas and churches, hence the icons in the church in Owczary are clearly influenced by Western baroque art, apart from the images of the Mother of God and Christ. A few images were written by an anonymous rural painter. In addition to the iconostasis, the church also has side altars of St. Nicholas, Our Lady and Christ. The icon in the latter dates from 1664 and was originally located in an older iconostasis in the same temple. The area of the church is surrounded by a wall of broken stone with entrances: on the south side in the form of a brick gate and on the west by a massive brick gatehouse. It is a building from around the mid-nineteenth century. Currently, it serves as a Greek Catholic parish church and a branch church of the Roman Catholic parish in Sękowa.
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