The village of Lazeshchina, like a purgatory, must be passed by everyone who is going to make an express ascent to Goverla and Petros and not planning a full-fledged promenade along the whole Chernogorsky ridge. In addition to conquering the steepest mountains of the Ukrainian Carpathians and tasting all the culinary and aesthetic pleasures provided by the hosts of local «green gardens», the most famous settlement of Rakhiv district offers its guests to contemplate a true treasure — a wooden temple, the age of which is approaching 300 years.
The wooden church of Plitovatom, dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, is located in the tract of Plitovatom, Plitovy, whence its nickname. It is an intermountain hollow near Lazeshchyna, on the way to the no less famous and dear to every traveler’s heart village of Yasynia. The temple was repeatedly depicted on Austro-Hungarian and Czechoslovak open, which were happy to print picturesque landscapes of Podkarpackie Rus’. The most famous depictions of this Lazeszczyna church are the engravings by I. Rzierzycha, created and reproduced by the master in the 18th century.
The history of the construction of the church is unusual. It was «conceived» in 1780 in the village of Yablunitsa, which is located on the territory of Ivano-Frankivsk region under the Yablunetsky pass. But already in 1781 «newborn Peter and Paul» were loaded on a sledge, transported over the Yablunitsa Pass and brought to Lazeshchyna. The transfer was organized by wealthy peasant spouses Plastunyak Mykhailo and Telechuk Maria, as evidenced by a commemorative inscription on the wall of the church, but the patron of the arts is called Jurk Lekluk. The story of why the House of God could not be originally built in Lazeshchyna, and why he had to be taken as an infant over the Yablunetsky Pass, remains one of the most interesting mysteries of the local sacral architecture.
But whatever the case, the Pletovska Church has become one of the main attractions of Lazeshchyna. It is a five-srubbed cross-shaped structure, which was built using logs from the best spruce trees that grew on the slopes of the Yablunitsa Ridge. The temple itself is one-storeyed, covered with shingles. Its main decoration is a hipped octagonal roof with a chapter, which occupies at least one third of the total length of the entire structure. The log cabin itself, choirs, balustrade and interior are decorated with carvings. In addition to the roof, from abundant precipitation Pletovskaya church is protected by a wooden canopy, girdling the building around the perimeter in the place of the conditional end of the first floor. The two-storey bell tower, covered with the same hipped roof in tone with the main building, is a companion to the church of Peter and Paul. Both buildings were included in the Soviet list of architectural monuments, so they were restored in 1971.
Thanks to this attitude of the authorities to this temple, it did not become a depressing and depressing sight, like many of its colleagues — wooden churches of the Carpathians. You can see this little masterpiece of Hutsul architecture by coming to s. Jasinja, Lazeshchyna, or Jablunica. Besides seeing a unique wooden temple and conquering a cohort of Ukrainian two-thousanders, you can enrich your vacation in the Carpathians with tasting mineral waters from a number of springs along the road, as well as participating in the famous potato festival held in Lazeshchyna in September!