Pezinok – St Sigismund’s Church

History

   The church was built in the first half of the 13th century. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the temple was rebuilt in the gothic style, a chancel was added to the original church. At the end of the fourteenth century, a side aisle was added to the north. In the sixteenth century, the church received new vaults, and in the 16th century, the nave received a vault.
   In 1611, the church briefly passed into the hands of Evangelicals. Already in 1617 it was again a Catholic. Protestants again took over the building in 1645 during the rebellion of George Rákóczi. During this period, a porch was added to the nave from the south, and the whole church was surrounded by a wall. Smaller corrections were also made in the 19th and 20th centuries. During World War II, the upper part of the tower was severely damaged by Russian soldiers.

Architecture

   The church was originally a late Romanesque building with an imposing, slender, four-sided western tower, a single nave and a sacristy on the north side. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, a polygonal, gothic chancel (built on the site of an older presbytery of unknown shape) and a northern aisle (chapel) were added. The nave and side aisle originally had separate gable roofs, which later replaced one common one.
   The original Romanesque building was illuminated by small, strongly splayed outwards and semicircular windows (two on the south side of the nave). The gothic ones already had a pointed arch form, they were much larger, filled with two-light tracery (the window in the northern wall of the nave) or one-light, topped with trefoils (chancel). At least some of the windows were filled with colorful stained glass, probably similar to the one preserved in the gothic window on the eastern side of the aisle, where there was a stained glass showing, in addition to plant motifs, the tower of heavenly Jerusalem.
   Inside, the nave was originally covered with a flat, wooden ceiling, replaced in the 16th century by a vault based on the central pillar. The side aisle received a rib vault already at the time of its creation, as well as the chancel, reinforced with stepped buttresses.

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bibliography:
Website apsida.sk, Pezinok.