Reformed Church – Tiachiv (Técső)
The Reformed church of Tiachiv is one of the oldest monuments of the Tisza valley in Maramureș: its Gothic walls date from the Middle Ages, and its painted coffered ceiling was made in 1748. For centuries the church has been the centre of the Hungarian Reformed community of Tiachiv.
The exact date of its construction is unknown. Local tradition places it in the 13th century, after the Mongol invasion, while a description based on the 1864 visit of Imre Henszlmann and Flóris Rómer dated its Gothic forms to the 15th century. Originally a Catholic church, it passed to the Reformed community during the Reformation, according to most sources in 1546. The priest of Tiachiv is already mentioned in the papal tithe registers of the 1330s, and the town was one of the five royal crown towns of Maramureș.
In 1748 the church was enlarged, and the painted wooden coffered ceiling of the nave was made at the same time: among the floral decoration of its roughly two hundred panels appear a lion, a pelican, a mermaid and a dragon. The three-tier bell tower with a clock was added in front of the west façade in 1810, and the organ in the gallery dates from 1853. The single-nave church has a square-ended sanctuary covered by a ribbed cross vault, its side walls are reinforced by buttresses, and its walls survive from the Middle Ages almost to their full height.
Until 1944 the church housed the richest library in Maramureș. An early 20th-century Hungarian flag of the congregation survived the Soviet era hidden in the church loft and can be seen again today. Since 1992 a bust of the painter Simon Hollósy has stood next to the church: one of the founders of the Nagybánya artists' colony, he taught and painted in Tiachiv in his last years and died here in 1918. The church is an architectural monument of national importance in Ukraine.
Visiting: the church stands in the centre of Tiachiv at Nezalezhnosti (Independence) Street 29. The town lies on the Tisza, along the Romanian border, about 30 km south-east of Khust. Before travelling, check the current travel advice of your foreign ministry.
Sources: Wikipedia · Wikipedia (Ukrainian) · Wikipedia – Simon Hollósy
Photo: Dmytro Petishkin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 · Photo: Viacheslav Galievskyi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Town:
Tiachiv (Técső)