Căldăruşani Monastery

Căldăruşani Monastery lies 30 km. from Bucharest to the north-east, on the shore of the lake with the same name. The monastic establishment was founded by ruling prince of Wallachia Matei Basarab (1632-1654). The monastery was built on the location on which, in 1638, there had existed a wooden skeet. Initially, there were constructed three sides of the monastic cells and the eastern defense wall of the holy establishment. The fortress was provided with a watch-tower, which now has become the belfry of the monastery. Worthy of note is the fact that the church building was erected in just one hundred days. It was finished on 26th October, 1638. The beautiful church, which was constructed of bricks and of river stones, attracts the attention of the visitors by its uniqueness.


From the point of view of its architecture, it is three-cusped, being in fact a combination of the architectural styles that are characteristic of the architectural pattern of the princely church of the Curtea de Argeş Monastery, as well as of the church of the Dealu Monastery (which is located in the town of Târgovişte). The paintings inside the church were reconditioned over the succeeding centuries, in 1778, 1817 and 1911. Master Belizarie repainted the church in the third decade of the 20th century.


A school for church painters was founded here in 1778. The renowned Romanian painter Nicolae Grigorescu attended this school within the period 1854-1856. Moreover, in 1825, a painting house was also accommodated within the monastery grounds. Between 1950 and 1958, major extensive repairs and restoration works were initiated by His Beatitude, the Patriarch Justinian and by Father Gherasim Cristea (the abbot of the establishment at the time). Archimandrite Lavrentie Gata set out to rebuild the Abbot's house and added a storey to it; he also supervised the introduction of modern facilities, the central heating system, as well as the construction of several additional outbuildings for monastic domestic uses.



Subsequent to the disastrous earthquake that struck Romania on 4th March, 1977, the church was restored and thoroughly consolidated. The cellar to the right hosts nowadays the Thesaurus, where religious items are kept. The monastery shelters one of the most valuable museum collections of the Patriachy, comprising liturgical objects, sacerdotal attire, icons, old printed books, as well as six icons that were executed by the renowned painter Nicolae Grigorescu. The resident monastic of the Căldăruşani Monastery respect the religious rites of the Holy Mount Athos, performing the divine service of the Seven Lauds round the clock.

Snagov Monastery

40 km North from Bucharest, the traveler arrives in an oak forest, which was once part of a vast forest that covered up until the 18th century the whole Romanian Plain. Well hidden by the forest, a magnificent view of the Lake Snagov unfolds at one’s feet. No use. People have discovered it all, the area being already conquered by hundreds of weekenders. No wonder – its popularity is sustained by the King’s Castle and by Ceauşescu’s somewhat bigger castle.


An island stretches out in the lake at some distance from the shores. It houses Snagov Monastery, a rustic cloister from 1364. The monastery is built in Byzantine Style: walls are built of alternating rows of stones and bricks, the church itself is built in the form of a cross with a semicircular altar. The roof is very much unlike the Byzantine way of building: because of the lower temperatures during winter than in the Greek area, the roofs are steeper, so that the snow can fall down.


When visiting the monastery, something makes you shiver, especially, if you see every now and then, somewhere far away, one of the few monks walking in front of you. Dressed in their black robes and black hoods, they seem to be servants of an evil force. Just enter the church and you shall see why. Inside the monastery one can see the largest assembly of medieval frescoes from Wallachia, dating from the XVIth century.


Snagov village was built around the Snagov monastery. Archeologists confirmed human presence of inhabitants since 400 BC. The first written record of it is found in a document from the court of Mircea cel Bătrân and dated 1408. The name is of probably Bulgarian origin, from the word sneg (meaning "snow"). It might also derived from the Bulgarian snaga, meaning "human body".


The Wallachian Ruling Prince, Vlad Ţepes (known as Dracula), is is supposed to be buried here, after being killed in the nearby forest by the Janissaries during a battle between Wallachian & Ottoman forces. In the middle of the church a thumb has been discovered, with bones of a man in precious clothes. In the Chronicles of the time, he is depicted as a ruthless ruler, who executed his enemies employing the most terrible torments. The same fate had also the thieves. This is why all commercial roads of the country were safest at his time. People say, one could let a carriage full of gold unattended on the road, no one risked stealing even a small piece of gold.

Curtea de Argeş Cathedral

The town of Curtea de Argeş lies 38 km northwest of Piteşti, at the foot of the Făgăraş Mountains, in the Argeş River valley.

Written documents give evidence of the fortified town of Argeş since 1330, whereas during the Middle Ages, it was the second capital of Wallachia after Câmpulung and before Târgovişte. The Court of Argeş stronghold consists of a set of ruins among which the basements of two princely residences within a wall made of boulders taken from the river, together with the oldest church in Wallachia, the Princely Church. Built by Radu Negru, the founding prince of Wallachia, otherwise known as Basarab I and his son, Alexander, the Princely Church has front sides made of apparent bricks and river stone. It is decorated with painted frescoes, actually the first samples of Romanian painting (14th century), which, though observing Byzantine tradition, are very much alive and personalized, and thus much closer to Giotto's art styles than to the rigid mannerism of the Greek masters.


A more impressive monument, the Episcopal Church, or the Monastery of Curtea de Argeş, was founded by prince Neagoe Basarab between 1514-1517, on the site of a metropolitan church which had been raised in the 14th century and acknowledged by the Archbishopric of Constantinople in 1359.


The legend has it that one day, a very wealthy and religious Wallachian prince, the Black Prince, rode with nine masons and their master Manole to find a place and build a church more beautiful than anyone may have seen before. The masons started to work, but whenever they reached to the top, the walls would colapse before they could ever finish it. They decided that the first human being they would lay their eyes upon was to be sacrificed in order to see their work done. And it so happened the Manole's wife showed up to bring her husband's lunch, so that he had to keep his vow and immure his own wife alive within the church walls. The place of this immolation can still be seen between two walls of the southern front side of the church. This is how the monastery could be finished, and the prince was pleased to find that it was as beautiful as it could be. But the prince would not want Manole to build another church that could match his own. So he ordered the scaffolding removed, which left Manole stranded on the roof. In an attempt to escape, Manole made himself a pair of wings from shingles, but they were of no avail, and he would crash to the ground like Icarus and die. Upon his crash, on that very spot, a spring would gush forth, which is now called Manole's well. Today people would throw coins in its basin, to make their wishes come true.


Indeed Neagoe Basarab (1512-1521) would be known in history as the Black Prince, and it is a real fact that the church master builder's name whom he had brought from Nicosia was Manole. Again it is no less true that the prince himself supervised the construction of the monastery all the way, from the beginning to the end. The church one can see today is not Manole's original creation of 1517, but a recreation of 1875-1876 by the Frenchman Lecomte de Nouy, who grafted on all the pseudo-moorish accretions.


Like with so many other cultural sites of the world, at Curtea de Argeş Monastery legend and truth intermingle and form up an inseparable whole, lending a special flavour to the flow of historic facts and figures.

The Monastery Curtea de Argeş, built in Albeşti stone along with marble and mosaic brought from Constantinople by Neagoe Basarab, has the classical harmonious aspect of an Orthodox church the pronaos (also a necropolis), the nave and the altar have a peculiar architecture and rich ornaments a boxy structure enlivened by whorls, rosettes and fancy trimmings rise into two octogonal belfries, each having eight narrow windows frames, each festooned with little spheres and the three armed cross of Orthodoxy. The roofs of the four belfries seem to have been made by a goldsmith, whereas the chains which support the crosses seem to be large pieces of jewelry.

A belt carved in stone as a rope twisted in four goes all around the church dividing its exterior walls into two sides, namely the lower side, decorated with rectangular tall panels framed in carved stone, with narrow windows, and the upper side, with a range of largely opened arches which encircle the church. The decorations of the disks which link the arches have Arabian, Persian and Georgian motifs, in green, in blue and golden colours.

Prince Neagoe's secretary, Gavriil Protul would describe the monastery as outshining in beauty the monasteries of Sion and St. Sofia built by Emperor Justinian. It was Neagoe Basarab's hope that his achievement might be a piece of "God's Heaven". In 1654, a foreign traveller would rank the monastery among "the wonders of the world".

Prince Neagoe Basarab died before he saw his "temple" finished. His son-in-law Radu from Afumaţi (1522-1529) took over and brought Dobromir of Târgovişte to paint the interior walls (1526). Unfortunately, the paintings restored in 1875 by Emile Lecomte de Nouy's brother are inferior to the original ones. Fragments of the genuine frescoes made by Dobromir can still be seen at the Art Museum and at the National Museum of History in Bucharest.

Along time, the church was successively damaged by wars, plundering, earthquakes, fires and was restored during the rules of Princes Matei Basarab (1632-1654), Şerban Cantacuzino (1678-1688) and Bishop Iosif Sevastis at the end of the 18th century.


Whatever the patrons and artists who designed this church, it remains impressive by its votive paintings, by its marble gilted bronze, by its onyx iconostasis, by its twelve columns with floral ornaments representing the twelve apostles. In the pronaos there are the tombs of its founders, Neagoe Basarab and Radu from Afumaţi, as well as of the first couples of Romanian kings and queens (Carol I and Elisabeta, Ferdinand and Maria) which render this church not only a princely, but also a royal necropolis, alongside a splendid monument of Romanian art and history.