Church of St. John of Nepomuk
Building, structure
Ipolykeszi Nagycsalomja branch. The current Roman Catholic neoclassical church of the village was built in 1899 using older elements on the bank of the stream flowing into Ipoly, on a small, seemingly artificial elevation. The sanctuary of the north-south oriented single-nave church is polygonal. Its old altarpiece depicts the patron saint, Saint John of Nepomuk. ; ... The current frescoes of the church were created by the Hungarian painter Zsolt Lencsés using antique plaster technology. One of the large paintings shows Saint John of Nepomuk near the Charles Bridge in Prague, as the executioners are about to push him into the Vltava. Here, too, he presses the index finger of his right hand to his mouth, and we see small stars above his head. On the following frescoes, we can see the Annunciation, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Baptism of Jesus, and the Last Supper. All the pictures also feature a dove symbolizing the Holy Spirit. You can also see the fresco of the Risen Christ on the walls, but the one depicting him being carried away by the fiery chariot is also a very expressive creation. The coats of arms of Pope Benedict XVI and Ipolykeszi have also been added to the walls, but we can also see an Ipolyi picture here. And this Ipolyi quote can also be read on the wall of the nave: “A nation that lets its memories be lost, thereby creates its own tomb.” The human-sized corpus, donated to the church by Szilvia Kosík and made by the sculptor Péter Párkányi Raab, who hails from Balassagyarmat, was recently placed above the altar of the sanctuary.