1652 The whitewash that saved everythingVápno, ktoré všetko zachránilo

In 1652 the interior was brought up to date in the Baroque taste — new altars, a new pulpit — and the medieval wall paintings were limewashed over. It was not vandalism; it was fashion, and it is the single luckiest thing that ever happened to this building. Under a coat of lime, paint stops fading, stops flaking and stops being scrubbed, cleaned and repainted by each new generation. Everything a visitor comes to Žehra to see survives because for more than two hundred years nobody could see it.V roku 1652 upravili interiér podľa barokového vkusu — nové oltáre, nová kazateľnica — a stredoveké nástenné maľby zabielili vápnom. Nebolo to vandalstvo, bola to móda; a je to zároveň to najšťastnejšie, čo sa tejto stavbe kedy stalo. Pod vrstvou vápna maľba prestane blednúť, prestane sa odlupovať a prestane ju každá ďalšia generácia umývať, čistiť a premaľúvať. Všetko, pre čo do Žehry ľudia chodia, sa zachovalo práve preto, že to vyše dvesto rokov nikto nevidel.