Around the World: Agapia Monastery
Jul. 18th, 2009 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reviews_and_ramblingsI often told about my impromptu travel in Romania. The strange thing is that I'm not the most religious woman, but I spent most of my time in Romania visiting the Painted Churches in Bukovina and the various monasteries, most of them little walled citadels with an independent economy, able to survive without contacts with the external world.
by Elisa, Agapia Monastery, Romania, 2003
Sometime, like in the Agapia Monastery, a nuns monastery, the families who sent their daughters inside the walled "golden" prison, also paid for building a little cottage to host the daughter for the rest of her life. The one inside the walls are beautiful and finely decorated, but I found more interesting this one, just outside the main portal. Anyway all the Monastery has, still now, a very lively atmosphere, the nuns inside bake, embroider, bottle fruit... and all around the Monastery there are cattle and sown fields.
The history of this monastery starts with the old settlement - Agapia din Deal (Agapia from the hill) - founded probably, by Petru Rares and his wife Elena, between 1527-1538 or 1541-1546. The high place, hardly accessible, were Agapia din Deal is located, makes that at the beginning of the 17th century all the annexes to be moved on the place that it is today at Agapia din Vale (from the valley). Ruined and again built, burned and remade again, Agapia din Deal become a very charming hermitage. On the place of the church, built at the begining of the 17th century, hetman Gavriil, the brother of Vasile Lupu (Moldavian ruler), and his wife Liliana, raise at Agapia din Vale, in 1642, the Agapia Monastery.
Agapia, attacked and robed many times, was restored radically during 1858-1862. Is a period in which the great painter Nicolae Grigorescu makes here some masterpieces. The painting of the great maestro, that had not suffer much in the fire from 1903, are an important treasure of the monastery.
The monastery has a museum with an important collection of objects having great historical and artistic value. There old icons from XVI-XVII and XVIII centuries or signed by N. Grigorescu, textures and embroideries, crosses, other religious objects etc. There are also old manuscripts, carpets in Moldavian style made in the monastery workshops. (Source: http://www.csvd.ro/panoblog/360-romania/monasteries-of-moldavia/agapia-monastery/)
by Elisa, Agapia Monastery, Romania, 2003
Sometime, like in the Agapia Monastery, a nuns monastery, the families who sent their daughters inside the walled "golden" prison, also paid for building a little cottage to host the daughter for the rest of her life. The one inside the walls are beautiful and finely decorated, but I found more interesting this one, just outside the main portal. Anyway all the Monastery has, still now, a very lively atmosphere, the nuns inside bake, embroider, bottle fruit... and all around the Monastery there are cattle and sown fields.
The history of this monastery starts with the old settlement - Agapia din Deal (Agapia from the hill) - founded probably, by Petru Rares and his wife Elena, between 1527-1538 or 1541-1546. The high place, hardly accessible, were Agapia din Deal is located, makes that at the beginning of the 17th century all the annexes to be moved on the place that it is today at Agapia din Vale (from the valley). Ruined and again built, burned and remade again, Agapia din Deal become a very charming hermitage. On the place of the church, built at the begining of the 17th century, hetman Gavriil, the brother of Vasile Lupu (Moldavian ruler), and his wife Liliana, raise at Agapia din Vale, in 1642, the Agapia Monastery.
Agapia, attacked and robed many times, was restored radically during 1858-1862. Is a period in which the great painter Nicolae Grigorescu makes here some masterpieces. The painting of the great maestro, that had not suffer much in the fire from 1903, are an important treasure of the monastery.
The monastery has a museum with an important collection of objects having great historical and artistic value. There old icons from XVI-XVII and XVIII centuries or signed by N. Grigorescu, textures and embroideries, crosses, other religious objects etc. There are also old manuscripts, carpets in Moldavian style made in the monastery workshops. (Source: http://www.csvd.ro/panoblog/360-romania/monasteries-of-moldavia/agapia-monastery/)
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Date: 2009-07-18 09:11 am (UTC)