Ieud, once a rich village with wealthy gentry (ôneme║iö), has got two churches: ôThe Church on the Hill,ö the oldest (1364) wooden church in the world and part of the UNESCO world heritage, and ôThe Church in the Valley.ö This is dedicated to the Virgin and was built in 1717, after the last invasions of the Tartars.
The road leading to ôThe Church on the Hillö is a long path that the locals take on Easter time, ôbearing the cross.ö The church has an interior stairway built from the trunk of a single oak tree. The inside was decorated in the Byzantine style by the local painter Alexandru Panehalschi. The oldest Romanian religious book, the ôIeud Codexö dating back to 1543, was discovered here. The original is housed by the Library of the Romanian Academy.
According to the Maramure║ tradition, the old churchyard of the village surrounds the church. The funeral rites are faithfully observed by the villagers, and so the churchyard is frequently visited. The local art of wood-carving is particularly visible in the design and decorations of the crosses, which follow all the same pattern. The inscriptions offer a series of details about the life of those passed away. As it is often the case in Orthodox cemeteries, the funerary tablets in front of the crosses are replaced by a simple mound covered with vegetation.
