ÉGLISE SAINT-NICOLAS

This Serbian Orthodox church (Црква Светог Николе/Crkva Svetog Nikole, Kisha e Shën Nikollës) houses beautiful 16th-century frescoes. Located right next to the village cemetery and defended by a tower, it was erected and painted around 1345 as a burial place for the mother of Gradislav Sušenica, one of the most powerful nobles in the kingdom of Serbia in the 14th century. The church is very simple and consists of a single nave. Almost the entire interior was repainted in the 16th century and the wall that separated the narthex from the naos was knocked down in the 18th century. Of the original fourteenth-century frescoes, only the one at the bottom of the west wall (on the left as you enter) remains: St. Sava (founder of the Serbian Church) and his father Stefan Nemanja (founder of the Nemanjić dynasty) venerate an icon of the Mother of God and the Christ Child. Above, a scene of the Last Judgment with Christ surrounded by the choir of angels. The rest of the walls are occupied by a cycle of the Passion, including Simon of Cyrene, a passerby requisitioned to carry the cross (north wall, third register), a cycle of Christ's miracles, full of details, such as Jesus healing a deaf man by slipping a finger in his ear (south wall, fourth register), or a cycle of great feasts, where the scene of the Transfiguration stands out (on the vault, before the iconostasis). In the apse, a beautiful Orante with the Mother of God, arms raised, carrying the Christ child in medallion on her chest and surrounded by the Sun and the Moon as well as the archangels Gabriel and Michael.