The Orthodox Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Rakowa

Following the red trail from Sanok through the Słonne Mountains we descend to the Rakowa village. There is an abandoned wooden Greek Catholic Church dedicated to the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. After 1947, it was used as a Roman Catholic church. Currently, after building a new church, the Orthodox church has been abandoned.

It was built around 1779. The building of the Orthodox church is a timber framing structure, dichotomus, with a presbytery closed from three sides. Above the nave there is a ridged roof topped with a helmet. A vestibule was added from the west in 1900, above there is a tower crowned with a hip roof. The tower had bells, one from 1680 with a Ruthenian inscription, the other from 1715 funded by Jan Franciszek Konarski - a Kiev cupbearer. Both bells were moved to the belfry of the new church.

Inside the church there is an iconostasis, to which the icon was painted in 1894 by Zygmunt Bogdański.

Near the church there are two Greek Catholic cemeteries, few gravestones have survived to this day. The whole area is surrounded by the old-growth forest.