Bardejov is a UNESCO-listed medieval town in northeastern Slovakia whose Gothic square fortified walls and nearby spa village make it one of Central Europe's most rewarding and least-crowded historic destinations.
Slovakia: St Francis Wooden Church of Assisi in Hervartov
⛪ A Quiet Detour to Hervartov
I said goodbye to Bardejov with the sort of mild regret you feel leaving any decent hotel breakfast behind — not devastated, but aware that wherever I ended up next would have to work quite hard to compete. Bardejov itself had been a proper treat: a UNESCO-listed old town up in the far north-east of Slovakia, close to the Polish border, with a market square so perfectly preserved it looked like something built for a film set rather than somewhere people actually still lived. The town hall on that square, incidentally, dates from 1509 and is reckoned to be the oldest surviving secular public building in the whole of Slovakia, which is the sort of fact I like to have in my back pocket for pub quizzes, even though I will almost certainly forget it again within the fortnight.
Anyway, I pointed the car south and made one detour on the way, to a village called Hervartov, to see the Church of St Francis of Assisi. This was billed, in my own head at least, as the last of the wooden churches I’d be visiting on this trip, and I approached it with that particular blend of mild enthusiasm and mild guilt that I always feel when I turn up at a place of worship purely to gawp at the architecture. I’m not a religious man, not by a long stretch, but there’s something about turning a church into a tourist attraction that makes me feel like I ought to at least take my hat off, if I’d been wearing one, which I wasn’t, on account of it being a warm day and me having left it in the car in Bardejov, along with, I later discovered, my phone charger.
🪵 A Church Older Than I’d Assumed
I’d gone in expecting one of the so-called Articular churches, and told myself as much on the drive down, which shows you should never trust anything I tell myself on a drive. The Articular churches, for anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure, were a peculiar and rather marvellous consequence of the 1681 Diet of Sopron, at which the Habsburg authorities, under Emperor Leopold I, grudgingly allowed Lutheran and Calvinist congregations to build exactly two new churches per county — no more — and hedged the permission about with conditions clearly designed to make the whole business as awkward as possible. No stone. No metal nails. No tower, and certainly no bells. The building had to go up within a single year, and it had to sit outside the town walls, well away from the parish churches of the majority Catholic faith, as if the authorities were quietly hoping the whole idea might just wither on the vine if made sufficiently inconvenient. It didn’t wither. If anything, the restrictions produced something rather better than a conventional church might have been: enormous barn-like timber structures, built entirely without nails, holding thousands of worshippers apiece, the finest examples being over in Kežmarok, built in 1717 and reckoned to seat around 1,500 people, and at Hronsek, from 1726, and Leštiny, older again, from 1688. All three, along with Hervartov and a handful of others, ended up on UNESCO’s World Heritage list in 2008, bundled together as the Wooden Churches of the Slovak Part of the Carpathian Mountain Area.
Which is where I made my mistake, sitting in the car outside Hervartov congratulating myself on having ticked off another Articular church. It turns out Hervartov’s Church of St Francis of Assisi isn’t Articular at all. It’s Roman Catholic, and — this is the bit I found genuinely interesting once I’d stopped being embarrassed about getting it wrong — considerably older than any of the Lutheran examples, dating from somewhere around the very end of the fifteenth century, which puts it at over five hundred years old and makes it one of the oldest wooden churches surviving anywhere in Slovakia. It sits in the UNESCO listing alongside just one other Catholic wooden church, at Tvrdošín, with the rest of the group split between the Lutheran Articular churches and a further trio of Greek Catholic and Orthodox wooden churches further east. So there you go: five hundred years standing in a Carpathian village, and I turned up not even knowing what denomination I was looking at. Typical.
What Hervartov’s church does share with its Lutheran cousins, whatever their theological differences, is the timber itself and the modest, unshowy silhouette that comes from building without stone. Gothic in style, small in scale, with a shingled roof that’s been renewed heaven knows how many times over five centuries, it doesn’t announce itself the way a cathedral would. You could easily drive past it. I very nearly did.
🙏 A Service, and the Decency to Leave
The good news, such as it was, was that the church was open when I arrived. The less convenient news was that a service was in full swing, which put something of a dampener on my plans for a proper nose about. I went in anyway, as quietly as a large Englishman in walking boots is capable of managing, and stood at the back for a minute or two, taking in what I could of the painted interior without making a show of it. And it really is worth seeing, whatever your beliefs: geometric folk patterns running along the beams, and naïve, home-grown depictions of biblical scenes painted by hands that had clearly never been anywhere near an art school and were all the better for it. There’s an honesty to that sort of decoration that a lot of grander, better-funded churches rather lose along the way.
Then I did the decent thing and left, without so much as lifting my camera. Photographing a congregation halfway through a service struck me as exactly the sort of behaviour that gives tourists a bad name, and I’ve been on the receiving end of enough intrusive lens-waving myself, on the Underground of all places, to know how it feels. Some things simply aren’t worth doing, even when you’ve driven the best part of an hour out of your way specifically to do them, and even when it means going home with a gap in the photo album where Hervartov ought to be. I’m slightly annoyed about it even now, if I’m honest, in that mild, low-grade, entirely British way where you’re cross about something you know perfectly well you were right to do.
✨ Reflections
Looking back, Hervartov was a funny sort of stop — over almost before it began, no photographs to show for it, and me wrong about the one basic fact I thought I’d got right. And yet it’s stuck with me rather more than some of the grander sights further back down the road. There was something quietly satisfying about a five-hundred-year-old timber church, still doing exactly the job it was built for, with a congregation inside using it the way it had always been used, rather than filing past a rope barrier while a guide recited dates.
Planning Your Visit to the Wooden Articular Church at Hertarov
⛪ Herterov St Francis of Assisi Wooden Church
| 📍 Location | 9 Artashi Street, Yerevan, Armenia |
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| 🕖 Opening Times | Daily, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM | 🌐 Website | stfrancis.am |
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| 📞 Phone | +374 10 52 44 00 | info@stfrancis.am |
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| 🏛️ Denomination | Roman Catholic (Franciscan) |
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| ℹ️ Notes | One of the few wooden churches in Yerevan. Built by the Franciscan order. Visitors are asked to dress modestly and maintain silence during services. |
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🎟️ Entry Fees
| General Admission | Guided Tour | Photography | Children (under 12) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | By arrangement | Free | Free |
🗺️ Getting There
🚇 Metro — Take the Yerevan Metro to Yeritasardakan Station, then a short taxi or walk of approximately 15–20 minutes heading southwest toward Artashi Street.
🚌 Bus — Several Yerevan city minibus (marshrutka) routes run along Tigranyan Street nearby. Ask locally for the stop closest to Artashi Street.
🚗 By Road — From Republic Square head west along Abovyan Street, turn onto Tigranyan Street and follow signs toward the Artashi Street junction. Street parking is available nearby. Taxis and ride-hailing apps (GG Taxi, Yandex Go) serve the area readily.
🚶 On Foot — From the city centre the church is walkable in around 25–30 minutes, passing through the Kond district, one of Yerevan’s oldest neighbourhoods.
The Best Time to Visit Slovakia
Slovakia sits at the heart of Central Europe, and its seasons are genuinely, almost theatrically, distinct — deep-winter ski slopes in the High Tatras, blossom-filled castle courtyards in spring, long sun-drenched summer days across the national parks, and copper-gold forests in autumn. Each season has a compelling case to make, and the right time to visit depends almost entirely on what kind of trip you are after.
❄️ Winter — December to February
Slovakia’s winter is proper and unapologetic. Temperatures in Bratislava hover between -5°C and 2°C through January, and the High Tatras receive heavy snowfall from December onwards, making the country one of Central Europe’s most accessible and affordable skiing destinations. The ski resorts at Jasná in the Low Tatras and Štrbské Pleso in the High Tatras are the main draws, with well-maintained pistes, reliable snow cover and lift queues that rarely match the queues at comparable Alpine resorts. Away from the slopes, Bratislava transforms beautifully in December: the old town’s main squares fill with Christmas markets selling mulled wine, trdelník and handmade ornaments beneath the castle walls, and the city’s bars and restaurants take on a particularly warm, candlelit character. Hotel rates outside the Christmas and New Year fortnight are at their lowest of the year, and the main sights — Bratislava Castle, Spiš Castle, the Slovak National Gallery — attract a fraction of the summer crowds. The main downsides are the very short daylight hours, icy pavements in the cities and the closure of some mountain roads and hiking trails due to snow.
Packing: A well-insulated winter coat, thermal base layers, waterproof boots with grip, gloves, a hat, a scarf and hand warmers for extended time outdoors; ski hire is readily available at the main resorts if you do not want to travel with equipment.
🌸 Spring — March to May
Spring arrives gradually in Slovakia, beginning with cool, unsettled weather in March and warming steadily to genuinely pleasant conditions by May, when daytime temperatures in Bratislava regularly reach 16–18°C. The snowmelt in the mountains makes this a spectacular season for hiking — waterfalls run fast and full, the high valleys are green and empty, and the summer crowds have not yet arrived. Bratislava’s castle gardens come into colour from April, and the city’s café terraces begin to fill as the weather improves. Easter is a particularly good time to visit, with folk festivals, decorated markets and regional traditions that feel more authentic than much of what Central Europe offers at Christmas. The spa towns of Piešťany and Trenčianske Teplice, well known to Slovak and Czech visitors but still largely off the international tourist trail, offer excellent value for a day trip or overnight stay before the summer season lifts prices. Showers are frequent throughout, especially in April, and snowfall is possible at altitude into May.
Packing: Layers that can be added or removed through the day, a waterproof jacket, comfortable walking shoes and a compact umbrella; light fleece or merino base layers for cooler evenings and higher altitudes.
☀️ Summer — June to August
Summer is Slovakia’s busiest and most accessible season, with long daylight hours, warm temperatures across the country and every attraction open and fully operational. Bratislava hums with outdoor concerts, riverfront bars and day-trippers from Vienna — the two cities are just an hour apart by train, making the Slovak capital a popular side trip from Austria. The High Tatras are at their most dramatic and walkable, with well-marked trails leading up to mountain lakes, glacier-carved valleys and ridgeline paths with views into Poland to the north. Slovakia’s castle-per-square-kilometre ratio is one of the highest in Europe, and the long summer days make it easy to combine two or three — Spiš Castle, Bojnice and Oravský Podzámok are the most visited — in a single road trip across the country. Folk festivals run throughout the season, with the Východná Folklore Festival in July widely considered the most important in the country. The downsides are the price premium over other seasons and the humidity in Bratislava and the southern lowlands during July and August, which can make sightseeing in the middle of the day uncomfortable.
Packing: Lightweight, breathable clothing, a sun hat and sunscreen for open hillsides and castle grounds, comfortable walking shoes or hiking boots depending on your itinerary, a light layer for mountain evenings and air-conditioned interiors, and a refillable water bottle.
🍂 Autumn — September to November
Autumn is arguably Slovakia’s most underrated season and, for many visitors, its most rewarding. September retains much of summer’s warmth — temperatures in Bratislava often reach 18–20°C in the first half of the month — while the summer crowds have already dispersed and hotel rates have eased noticeably. The wine regions of the Small Carpathians and the Tokaj vineyards in the south-east are at their best during the harvest, with wine festivals running from late September into October and village markets selling fresh grape must, roasted chestnuts and seasonal produce. The High Tatras put on a vivid display of autumn colour into October, and hiking conditions remain excellent until the first significant snowfall, which typically arrives at altitude in late October. November brings cold, grey, frequently rainy weather across most of the country, and some mountain attractions, boat services and seasonal restaurants close for the winter from the end of October.
Packing: A mid-weight jacket, layers for variable daytime temperatures, waterproof footwear, a compact umbrella and comfortable walking shoes; warmer layers become important from October onwards, especially at altitude or in the north.
Overall Best Time to Visit
June to September offers the most dependable combination of warm weather, long daylight hours and a full programme of festivals and open attractions, and is the easiest window for first-time visitors who want to cover both Bratislava and the mountains in a single trip. That said, Slovakia rewards those who look beyond the obvious peak season: December brings genuine Christmas atmosphere and excellent skiing at prices that undercut the Alps considerably, April and May offer the mountains at their most dramatic and the cities at their least crowded, and September delivers warm weather, harvest festivals and the year’s best value rates all at once. The one window most visitors would do well to avoid is November, when the combination of short days, frequent rain and widespread closures makes it the least rewarding month for most itineraries.
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