(source: Branislav Caban)
The most famous sacral monuments in the Gemer region are its local Gothic churches, but there are also other interesting temples in the region.
These include a pair of Romanesque rotundas in Šivetice and Prihradzany.
They are the only monuments of their kind in Gemer, and it is interesting that they are located in neighbouring villages less than three kilometres apart.
Both rotundas date from approximately the middle of the 13th century. The largest of them, the Šivetka, has an inner diameter of up to 11 metres, which makes it the largest rotunda in Central Europe, according to some sources.
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The building in Prihradzany is smaller, with an internal dimension of about 9.7 metres. It is also significantly less tall, and therefore does not create the same monumental impression as its bigger sister.
Both also differ in the material used for their construction. The one in Šivetice is made of brick, the one in Prihradzany of quarry stone. Construction of both sacral buildings was apparently undertaken by the same building workshop.
Together with the nearby small castle on Muteň hill, of which nothing is left today, they probably also performed a defensive function.
This is evidenced, for example, by the walkway under the roof of the Šivet rotunda, from where there was a good view of the surrounding landscape and the important road from south to north that passed through the village and below the castle.
