In Jarovnice, apart from the originally Renaissance manor house, there is also another noble residence in the south-eastern part of the town. The curia was built at the end of the 19th century, built by a nobleman Szinyei-Merse Pál, a painter of world renown, coming from a family that has owned the village since the Middle Ages. He lived here for a considerable part of his life and produced many of his works until his death in 1920.
The curia has undergone only minimal structural modifications since the time of construction. The ground-floor block building on the eastern façade with a dominant columned portico with Tuscan columns and a triangular tympanum is surrounded by the historic park and the rest of the outbuildings (to the west of the Curia). The main façade of the courtyard is vertically articulated by pilasters with moulded capitals and footings, horizontally the façade is articulated by a banded boss at plinth level and a moulded crown cornice with two additional bands which also circle the portico. The bossing and crown cornice also decorate the other facades. Above the rectangular window openings of all facades are simple over-window cornices formed by a narrow cornice and a band below. The rooms of the longitudinal double-tract are covered by flat ceilings. In addition to these intangibles, the building aesthetically complements rare art decoration of the ceiling the northern room of the eastern wing, in the spirit of the emerging Art Nouveau (based on the Neo-Renaissance), which has no parallel in the rural environment of the Šariš region. The painting is rectangular in shape, consisting of geometric shapes bordered around the perimeter by illusory cornices, while the cornices are also used in the partitioning of the individual shapes. The decoration is dominated by clearly floral motifs, complemented by figures of angels on the corners, or heads of the devil, incorporated into floral motifs and other, mostly ancient figures.
The building is a valuable example of the architecture of a rural noble residence from the end of the 19th century. However, the architectural values go far beyond the art-historical values and especially the intangible values. The curia is set in the setting of a historic park - the eastern edge of the older landscaping of a large manor house (18th century park), the edge of which was reclaimed in the late 19th century as a separate park in connection with the curia.
The Curia, together with the orchard landscaping, was declared a National Historic Landmark in May 2013.
Source/photo municipality Jarovnice
