A decaying wooden church and belfry, gloomy even despite the snow surrounding them. That is a sad image of the abandoned Greek Catholic Dormition of the Mother of God church in Babice, a village in Southeastern Poland. Once beautiful temple, today significally bitten by time and little by little getting closer to the ground. Situated on a hill so steep that simply seeing it’s enough to become discouraged from climbing up lose any hope to find easier way to reach the top.
However, being in Babice it’s worth to put some effort to reach the temple, open the old heavy doors and have a look on the interior remembering the times of greatness of this place. This wooden church, built in 1840, became abandoned in 1947 after the displacement of Ukrainians living in the area, and since then its condition has been getting worse and worse. Grey walls make the building look gloomy, and this gloominess also has taken over the interior of the temple. Despite this, there is still some dust of the passed greatness of the place left inside, and letting in a little bit of light is enough to bring back it. Thus sunlight blows away the darkness from the altar, elegant carved columns, polychrome, and let us have a short glimpse on the temple in its golden ages.
No matter how gloomy, this church still hides some beauty inside. The one that is hidden mainly in details, as the rest of the building are only bare walls. However, that still makes the temple impressive—the gloominess filling the place makes the mentioned elements even brighter and stucking in the mind for a long time.
