Tag Archives: Monastery

Suceviţa – a long walk to a dramatic reveal

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Friday 26 September 2025 – The day dawned bright and cold. Accuweather swore blind that the temperature hit freezing point overnight, but promised termperatures into double figures – just – by the end of a sunny day. We decided to head out on today’s walk at around 10am and headed down to breakfast, which, as yesterday was ample and tasty. The hotel is really quite large, as evidenced by the fact that they had a 50-strong coach party in on the day we arrived. However, they departed (praise be) and for at least one of the nights we’ve stayed here we were the only guests, which is a slightly weird experience. The staff seem to number about four, which is fine if you’re the only guests, but I hope they’re going to gear up a bit for the tours which we were told they’re expecting over the coming days. The hotel is a bit dowdy, but the food has been very good and the service very friendly, if not really Anglophone in any real sense of the word. English she is not spoke so very much in the hotel, but smiling, nodding and pointing at things kept our use of Google Translate to a minimum.

Leaving breakfast, we were accosted by a gent, speaking French, who asked us if we were headed to Casa Felicia. We were, and it turned out that he was the proprietor and had come to pick up our bags, so we quickly went and got them for him.

Our destination today was in Suceviţa, a walk of anything between 16 and 18km, depending on whose information you consulted. All sources, however, were united in setting expectations – a gentle rise and fall, but with a steep lump in the middle. Garmin plotted the course like this.

Using the Garmin data, ChatGPT told me that the gradient in the Lump was a stretch of one kilometre up a slope of one in six – quite steep. So one possible course of action would have been to be given a lift with our bags. But we squared our shoulders and headed forth on foot.

The route was described in our information as “the monk’s path” between the monasteries of Putna and Suceviţa. It was also on an established route, the Via Transylvanica. A fellow hiker (and subscriber to these pages), Ian, tells me that this is a 1500km hike across Romania, which he was now contemplating doing in a mere two months, a feat well beyond Jane and me. It’s exceedingly, possibly even excessively, well-marked

and these marks are accompanied by others, too.

Various searches suggest that the “m” is for “monastery” – specifically an indication of the route to the Suceviţa monastery. So that was encouraging. We saw the blue plus sign a lot as well, but I haven’t managed to find out which route it was the waymark code for. Whatever, the route led out of town on a concrete road

which led past kilometre posts for the Via Transylvanica.

Jane found out that there would be one of these approximately every kilometre, each with its own artwork on it, so we have a lot of photos of them; take it from me, they were there.

Soon, the concrete road turned into a forest track

but there continued to be facilities set up for people walking the route

although some needed a little attention, maybe.

Forest track it may have been, but it still led past posh properties with their own posh portals

and posh fences.

The going got wilder

and it was clear that there was a huge amount of logging traffic along the track. There was also evidence of horse traffic (we saw one cart being used to transport chopped up logs), and one could see from the hoofprint that the horseshoes actually had spikes to help with traction.

The heavy logging traffic meant that the going was quite muddy at times, and the track gradually increased in steepness as we went along;

There were watch towers at intervals,

we guessed to be able to look out for fires during the dry seasons. We also learned the Romanian for “Buen Camino”.

Eventually, the gradual increase in steepness became an extreme increase – we’d reached The Lump!

It was very steep in places

but, as you can see from the photos, the going underfoot was OK – not stony, slippery or treacherous, so actually the stiff pull up for the next kilometre was hard work but not at all daunting, as the hike out of Bran had been.

We reached the high point without incident and the track started back down again, at first gently,

and then not gently.

but again the going was largely good, just rather muddy in places, exacerbated by the tyres of the many mountain bikers who clearly use this track for some perverse kind of entertainment. The track levelled out, following the river

and then we reached the other side, where it again became forestry track.

Because we’d done The Exciting Bit, the track became a rather dull slog. Truth be told, the walk as a whole, with the exception of The Lump, was just a walk along a rather unvarying and not very interesting forestry track. But never mind, we’d made it.

Suceviţa, when we got there, was not dissimilar to Putna, in the very attractive houses to be seen.

Some were older and more traditional,

some more modern and ambitious.

Eventually, and to my relief, we reached a coffee bar and stopped for refreshments just outside the principal building in Suceviţa,

the monastery. We’d made good time, and so decided we’d go in and take a look rather than head off immediately to our accommodation. This monastery is different from the previous ones we’d visited in a couple of respects, the most immediate one being that they charge you to go in – 10 lei (about €2) per person. So you pay your money and walk through, and this is what lies within.

 

The outside is painted – we’d reached the first of the Painted Monasteries, which were actually the main reason we’d come all this way. Jane had seen a photo and on the strength of it we’d travelled to see some of these beautifully decorated buildings. The Suceviţa monastery is possibly the finest of them – and it indeed has a beautiful exterior.

Why the difference between this and, say, Putna monastery, which is imposing but plain on the outside? The Putna building predates the others, before the fashion developed to paint the outside. The frescoes of biblical scenes painted on the outside were a source of devotional inspiration to the largely illiterate villagers, and were also a visible declaration of Orthodox faith, resisting pressure from Ottoman, Protestant and Catholic neighbours.

The church is in a beautiful (and well-fortified) courtyard, too.

Going into the church,

past the graffiti of the centuries

you reach an impressive narthex,

which is rapidly followed by photographically a bitter disappointment. Photography inside the church is not allowed and there was a nun of very severe disposition there to enforce the ban. Actually, I could possibly have snuck a phone picture or two, but Jane gave me One Of Her Looks, so I didn’t. I had to content myself to what you can photograph from the door.

I find it ceaselessly annoying to have to pay to enter somewhere, only to find that photography is limited. They have their reasons, I suppose, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it and it left a sour taste in my mouth.  We tried to find an official book of photos of the inside – one standard tactic of milking the punters – and went into the shop. But the demeanour of the nun there made us feel we were invading her privacy, so we left.  Again, I suppose they have their reasons and want to maintain dignity, but I’d like to think that we were trying to make a contribution and were simply being rebuffed, and not with good grace.

Anyhoo…

We walked the half-kilometre or so to our accommodation and found it to be utterly charming, a green lawn surrounded on three sides by individual traditional houses making up the accommodation.

A guard cat was, as ever, on duty.

Our room looks comfortable and any autumn chill will be dispersed at the hands of its mighty heater.

The lady of the house made us welcome with tea and cake in the family dwelling making up the fourth side of the square. She, like her husband who transferred our bags, speaks French as her second language; this is what they learned at school, although these days English is taught. Jane’s expert French, from having lived in Paris, came in handy, and we established that dinner would be at 7pm, and would be with the other guests of the place. We met two of them in passing; they were two English ladies whom we had actually first seen in Putna, and so we knew we’d have some English conversation at dinner time.

As it happens, the other two guests were English as well, so Julia and Heather, Jeanette and her son Ian and we had a very congenial evening eating the delicious food cooked by Madame, making our way through a bottle of a rather tasty and fairly fiery apple liqueur, and talking mainly about our various travel experiences, both in Romania and elsewhere.

So now you know about the Painted Monasteries and have seen photos of one of them, possibly the most imposing of the lot. Tomorrow, we will be taken to visit another, in Moldovita, which should take up half the day. The other half is unprogrammed; one option is a scramble up a hill to see a view of the Suceviţa monastery from on high, but mere sloth is a possibility, too. We’ll have to see how the day pans out.

 

 

 

Putna II – still damp, but not dreary

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Thursday 25 September 2025 – Once again, the weather was damp, and colder than yesterday, with temperatures in single figures during a rainy morning. Accordingly, we dedicated the morning to full-time sloth, only emerging into the afternoon when things looked a little less bleak, when we went for a walk. Obviously.

Our objective was another monastery in the vicinity, called Sihăstria Monastery. The attentive among you will have noticed a similarity in name with the hermitage we visited yesterday, Chilia Daniil Sihastrul. All will become clear in good time.

Getting to this monastery involved a walk of some 5km.  Our walk took us past MishuCoffee where we again indulged ourselves in a couple of flat whites before heading out of town on a road that took us past the tradesmen’s entrance to the Putna monastery that we’d marvelled at yesterday.

We passed another selection of the attractive cottages one finds here

as we broadly followed the Putna river upstream. We passed a building that in jest I suggested was the local hydro power station and when we got close,

lo and behold, that’s what it was. The Putna river is not, it must be said, in full spate, but there is evidence, in the form of storm drains, that there are times when it’s a powerful flow.

After about 4km, we came to a building which I was sure was the monastery we sought.

I mean, it looks pretty monastic, dontcha think? Google maps swore blind that we had another kilometre to go and, when we drew closer and looked at the other major building on the site,

it became clear that this was a building site, not a monastery. Quite what they’re building we don’t know – there were no signs on view and Google maps remains tight-lipped on the subject. So we walked on, along the road which was now quite muddy in places from all the lorries and other heavy vehicles rumbling along it. We passed a shrine

and then, in the distance, could see our real objective.

See what I mean about the limited flow of the Putna river?

As well as the central monastery building, there were several others to be seen (including a cafe, which came in handy),

including a very cute little churchlet, reminiscent of the stave churches we saw recently in Norway. Initially, I thought it was a modern construction in traditional style, but it is probably older than that – see below.

It was locked, but I managed to get photo of a bit of the interior.

The main buildings of interest on the site, though, were the monastery, of course,

and a neighbouring stone church,

which, like so many places here, had a guard cat on duty.

The stone church is small, but, as is frequently the case in these parts, has a very ornate interior.

Walls and ceilings are covered in devotional images.

supplemented with carved wooden panels.

Aurochs’ Heads, with sun, rose (lower left) and moon, which appear on the Moldavian coat of arms.

There are also beautiful decorative details on the outer walls, including niches with representations of Romanian saints.

Obviously, our main interest was the monastery itself, and, as with the Putna monastery, front porch and narthex

suggested that the interior would be quite something.

I was quite surprised at how light the monastery was inside – others we’d been in had been really gloomy. But this building had windows and, on researching it, this shows that it’s a modern building. A bit of history and terminology follows….

The main building is called the Sihăstria Monastery. “Sihăstria” means “hermitage”, so it’s the Hermitage Monastery. Yesterday’s hermitage was called  Chilia Daniil Sihastrul, which I said was Daniil Silhastru’s hermitage. Actually, Daniil Sihastrul means “Danny the hermit” so a better translation would have been “The cell of Danny the hermit”. I hope that clears up that bit of terminology.

The reason for the Sihăstria Monastery name is because the building is on the site of what was a hermitage in the mid-15th century, with several cells occupied by hermits who wanted even more silence than a monastic life afforded, and a small wooden church. The site’s popularity led to the building of the stone church in 1758 (with the wooden church being moved to the “apple orchard” – this could well be the one pictured further above). The timing was unfortunate as the site fell into disrepair under Austro-Hungarian rule (1775 onwards); the church was closed and the site was deserted for some 200 years. In the 1990s, the hegumen of the Putna monastery began to restore the area and found the tombstones of the area’s original founding fathers, and so restored, redecorated and reconsecrated the stone church. This attracted more monks and the church became too small. So, in the early 2000s, the monastery building we see today was erected. That’s why it’s so light inside – it was built in the Windows era. Thank you. Thank you for reading my joke.

The stone church is reportedly built of “river stone”, presumably the stone which created the remarkable formations we saw by the river on our walk.

It’s clear that the area is being developed. As well as the not-really-a-monastery building we saw earlier, there was a lot of heavy construction traffic along the road, and evidence of heavy work on the verges.

On the walk back to the hotel, we saw a couple of slices of northern Romanian life: a traditional horse and cart;

and a dock fight,

a combination of a dog and cock fight, as farmyard animals noisily settled a dispute.  We also passed an enigmatic building,

the “Panzer Club”, which looks like it was once a place of ill-repute but which now simply looks disused. We stopped by at the mini-mart in the village petrol station and, having drunk the hotel dry of tonic, bought some so that we could indulge ourselves in G&Ts with dinner.

We’ve had a pleasant time in Putna. We’ve been able to relax a bit but still managed to absorb a lot of the culture and history of the area as well as learning something of its Orthodox religious background. And this despite some less-than-optimal weather. However, the weather is once again on the turn. Although summer has, I fear gone for this year, at least the sun is forecast to make a reappearance tomorrow, which is good, since we have an 18km walk tomorrow, involving a rather abrupt and steep lump in the middle. Today we ambled about 12km, which was at least some practice at getting ourselves back into the hiking mindset. Let’s see if we can complete tomorrow’s walk without whinging, eh?

Putna in the damp, Part 1

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Wednesday 24 September – The gloomy predictions of the chap on reception – and Accuweather – turned out to be spot on. Yesterday’s sunshine was the merest memory, summer was over, clouds had descended to ground level

and the hotel had taken precautions against there being actual rain.

The forecast was for merely damp but not actually raining this morning and tomorrow afternoon, and the strong likelihood of rain this afternoon and tomorrow morning. Accordingly, we’d made an outline plan to get up and out early today to beat both the weather and the putative invasion of the breakfast room by the bloody tourists in the coach party. (The hotel’s normal breakfast arrangements had been replaced by a buffet, we assume because of the coach party.) Sadly, whoever was planning the coach itinerary seemed to have had the same idea, so when we got down to breakfast, it was still bedlam in the restaurant. We retired for a while and came down again later. Although it was much quieter, it was clear that the hotel staff were well on the back foot when it came to keeping the buffet refreshed. We eventually cobbled together something approaching the requisite sustenance as we watched the coach depart outside.

It was damp but not actually raining as we finished breakfast, so we donned light waterproofs and sallied forth. There were a few items we’d noted as being worth a visit. Because of their religious connotations, calling them “attractions” seemed to me to demean them a bit, so “items of interest” they were. The first one we planned to visit was called Chilia Daniil Sihastru, Daniil Sihastru’s hermitage. Its official opening time was 10am so we made our way towards it in a leisurely fashion, so as not to arrive there too early. En route, we passed a, or perhaps the, local market, where mainly food produce was on offer, although there were a couple of non-food stalls as well.

We had both had the Romanian “cabbage salad” at various restaurants during our time here. I was a little surprised on getting my first one to see that its ingredients were limited to one – cabbage – my normal expectation is that a salad is a varied thing, but there you go. Anyway, cabbage salad is definitely A Thing in Romania, and we were delighted to find that one stall had a machine for making it.

That is really quite an industrial-strength mechanism for making a bit of salad, which underlines the popularity of the dish here. The state of the guy’s van also demonstrates the ubiquity of the vegetable. The market was a pleasant distraction from the mainstream of today’s litany of religious site visits.

The hermitage is only 1km outside Putna. The thing itself isn’t huge, a tiny chapel hewn from the rock above a cave,

but is sited within a park area with benches and so forth, which contributes to an air of calm about the place. Whilst we were there, it remained locked, but I was able to get a shot through the door

showing a simple interior. Daniil Sihastru lived in the cave beneath for some twenty years of his life, in the mid 1400s, creating the chapel above; later he withdrew to the monastery in Voroneț. Whilst we were there, a handful of other people came to visit the site, one of whom was dressed in monk’s garb. As he left, he did the traditional Orthodox Romanian obesiance of three bows and crossing himself.  The religious import of the place stems from the fact that Daniil Sihastrul (Romanian for “Daniel the Hesychast”) was a renowned Moldavan Orthodox spiritual guide, advisor of Stephen the Great, and (latterly) hegumen of Voroneț Monastery. He is regarded as a saint and it was on his advice that Stephen the Great built the Putna monastery.

I’m learning all sorts of religious vocabulary on this trip. “Hesychasm” is a contemplative monastic tradition among the Eastern Christian traditions of the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches in which stillness (hēsychia) is sought through uninterrupted prayer to Jesus. (I have to say that when I pray to Jesus, it’s rarely in a moment of stillness.)  “Hegumen” is the title for the head of a monastery in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, or an archpriest in the Coptic Orthodox Church, similar to the title of abbot. Stay tuned for more arcane religious terminology, by the way.

After the hermitage, we headed back towards downtown Putna, with the next objective being further exploration of the handsome parish church we’d passed yesterday. In doing so, we passed a selection of the interesting and attractive houses in the village.

A short cut took us towards the church, past a promising entry in Google Maps, MishuCoffee, a small but perfectly-formed establishment where we stopped for a flat white. Another customer, a local, on hearing our Englishness, started chatting with us. He had worked for seven years in Wembley, “in construction” (i.e. a Romanian builder) and we had a pleasant few minutes talking to him before moving on.

The parish church seemed to be closed, but actually we were also interested in a building in its graveyard, a wooden church, formally dedicated to “Dragoş Vodă”, according to some commentaries the founder of Moldavia, who reigned in the middle of the 14th century.

It is dated from the early years of the 15th century, and tradition has it that it was brought by Stephen the Great from Volovăţ. It is the oldest and only medieval wooden church known in Romania. It was closed, so all we could do was to peek in through the windows.

The graveyard itself is a thing of beauty.

The parish church was closed, so we didn’t get a chance to look in, and instead moved on to the monastery, intent on looking inside the museum and the chuch there.

En route, we of course passed through the white portal that we first saw yesterday, but today stopped to look in more detail at the memorial beside it.

The memorial, consecrated in 2018, commemorates the Fântâna Albă massacre, which took place on 1 April 1941 in Northern Bukovina, which had been forcibly occupied by the Soviet Union under the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939. A number (disputed but hundreds if not thousands) of Romanian villagers were killed by Soviet Border Troops as they attempted to cross the border from the Soviet Union to Romania near the village of Fântâna Albă (now Staryi Vovchynets in Ukraine). Many more of the area’s villagers were subsequently deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

In the monastery area itself, the church is an active one; there had been a service going on whilst we were there yesterday

and thus we couldn’t sensibly have gone in anyway. So, today we had the chance. Entering the doors takes you into the narthex – another new word for me. A narthex is the vestibule of a Christian church, typically located between the main door and the central nave. Historically, it served as a place for unbaptized people to stand and listen to the service, as they were not allowed in the nave.

This narthex is spectacular!

As you might infer from the state of the narthex, the church itself is a remarkable place.

It includes the tombs of Stephen the Great and his wife

The church is rather darker than the pictures show – the camera has allowed me to bring out the colours from the gloom.

We also went into the museum there. As one would expect, it has many devotional items on display: elaborately worked crosses;

icons;

a display of hand-crafted gospels from the 15th and 16th centuries, inscribed and illuminated on parchment;

and some extraordinarily elaborate embroidery work.

Here is a detail from the right-hand one above, which dates from 1510.

It’s astonishing to contemplate how something so elaborate, intricate and finely-crafted could come into being – the work of just three monks.

As you exit the museum, you see a pretty much life-size protrait of Stephen the Great himself.

That’s a fitting way to exit the museum, after which we headed back to the hotel, via a mini-market to buy some milk for the mugs of Twinings finest Earl Grey which would sustain us through the rainy afternoon to the point where we could decently go for an aperitif (slightly modified by the fact that we had drunk all their tonic yesterday, so it was gin and bitter lemon instead) and dinner. The rain had arrived during the afternoon, so our plan thus far is intact. Let’s see what tomorrow afternoon brings….