Eight wooden churches from Maramureș, included in world heritage of UNESCO.

The specific of the structural subsystem for wooden churches. Joints. Planimetry of the wooden churches. Geometrical parameters.

The paper studies and presents the planimetry, geometry and architecture of the wooden churches from Maramureș.

The first chapter presents the wood used by the carpenters and the way the logs were cut and prepared. It also covers the joints used in Maramureș. The most used two types were the projecting joints, especially used at the house construction and the flush corner joints, used for churches building. The most common flush corner joint was the dovetail joint.

The second chapter presents the structural system. It includes the walls, the roof and the tower.

The hired carpenter had to master with his knowledge, experience and skills how the logs would work in a wall, long after the construction was finished. In order to obtain tall rooms and remove the buckling or the bending of the wall, the carpenters used two levels of inner consoles.

The roofs were entirely built of rafters in both rural dwellings and churches, at least as far as the oldest standing buildings indicate. The local basilical wooden churches are characterised by the presence of two roofs. The main roof covers the vault, without any contact with it, while the second roof is a short skirt protecting the brake in the vertical walls.

The tower can be seen as a distinct structure. The most common place for the tower basement was enclosed in the structure of the building between the last two rows of beams. The neck of a tower was raised on the massive beams of the basement. The frame of the neck was built straight, with the same width under the bell chamber as at the level of the basement.

The most common plans of wooden churches are covered by the paper’s third chapter, while the forth presents the eight UNESCO World Heritage churches from Bârsana, Budești, Desești, Ieud Deal, Plopiș, Poienile Izei, Rogoz and Șurdești.

Chapter five presents the factors that affect the wooden monuments and the measures needed to be taken in order to protect the churches and their actual state.

There were analyzed four wooden churches, the ones from Bârsana, Budești, Desești and Ieud Deal and their main ratios were compared.

The conclusion is that, even though these churches were built along two centuries, in an 127 years interval, the carpenters used strict rules in structural conformation and there is a noticeable stability in the technical solutions.

Even though the information was transmitted verbally from one generation to the other, it was not altered or incomplete.