Tag Archives: Painted Monasteries

Raining in our expectations

Leave a Reply

Monday 29 September 2025 – Today was our last monastery. You’ll probably be glad, having been assailed by multiple images of multiple frescoed walls and ceilings, but stick with me one last time, eh?

The monastery, Voroneț monastery, is about 10km from the Humor monastery, i.e. about 12km from Maridor, where we’re staying. The original idea, as positied in our itinerary, was to be driven over there and to walk back. Given that we awoke to a damp, dismal day, with the prospect of rain for quite a bit of it, this plan didn’t appeal. We agreed with the lady of the house that we would be driven over there and also get a lift back.

After doing battle with a less-than-satisfactory shower which dispensed only less-than-hot water, we had a late breakfast. It was an ample meal, bearing considerable evidence of its rural roots – fried eggs, copious amounts of two sorts of cheese, meatballs, small cocktail-sized sausages, something that Julia the previous evening had described as buttermilk but which was more akin to a thin, somewhat fizzy yoghurt, bread and butter, plum jam and mashed avocado. We managed to get hot water for our tea, so we were well fed up by 10am, when the man of the house came to take us to the monastery. It was raining really quite hard at this point, and, rather engagingly en route, he picked up an elderly chap who was walking to town (a 7km journey) and dropped him off at the pharmacy. Then he took us to the monastery and, to our surprise, told us he’d wait whilst we looked around. This saved us the bother of working out how to get picked up and we were correspondingly grateful.

So: the monastery. It was constructed by Stephen the Great in 1488 over a period of 3 months and 3 weeks to commemorate the victory at Battle of Vaslui. Its walls weren’t painted until 1547, but they obviously did a bang up job, because the monastery has in its time been called the “Sistine Chapel of the East” for its vivid frescoes, which feature an intense shade of blue known in Romania as “Voroneț blue.”

However.

This is what you see as you walk in through the gate.

It’s a sad sight, not too surprising, I suppose. The monastery was deserted soon after 1775, when the Habsburg monarchy annexed the northern part of Moldavia and the monks only returned to Voroneț in 1991. It’s amazing, really, that those frescoes on the other side of the building have survived as well as they have.

The frescoes on the flat wall at the end of the monastery building also have survived well.

The story of the Last Judgement depicted on this wall seems to be similar to that on the narthex at Humor. (Voroneț came first – Ed)

Inside, as usual there was a prohibition on photography, but again, some others were taking  pictures, so I followed suit, as the interior is, like the others, a thing of joy.

For some reason, there was a seismograph installation in the church.

So there it was – our final monastery.

It was still raining as we went outside to be driven back to Maridor. The weather relented occasionally later and enabled Jane to get a couple of non-spattered views across the countryside from our room,

but the weather was too unreliable to risk going out for a walk and disturbing all the neighbourhood dogs, so we spent the rest of the day in sloth, drinking tea and sustaining ourselves with the delicious fudge-like something-or-other that we’d bought at Pasul Palma.

On this trip, we have now visited four of the six or seven painted monasteries of Bucovina which have UNESCO World Heritage status. The frescoed exteriors all date from the 1500s and of course show various levels of deterioration due to the effects of the weather (generally affecting one side more than the others), deficiencies of technique and degree of upkeep. Looking at them in chronological order:

Humor: one of the oldest, it was founded by Prince Petru Rares and painted in 1530. It is known for the rich red pigments but has deteriorated badly on one side.

Moldovița: also founded by Petru Rares and painted in 1532.

Voroneț: built by Stephen the Great in 1488 but not painted until 1547, it was deserted for 200 years between 1774 and 1991and fell into disrepair, hence the considerable deterioration.

Sucevița: founded by the Movilă family and painted in 1581, Sucevița was the last and is considered the finest of them all. Techniques of painting and upkeep had improved over the fifty years since Humor; the monastery was in a sheltered position and was additionally protected by high fortress walls, and as a result it is possible to get an inkling of how spectacular these monasteries must have looked 500 years ago!

We’ve therefore done what we set out to do – a short exploration of the country’s capital, a little hiking in the Carpathian mountains and a visit to probably the best-preserved of the Painted Monasteries. En passant, we’ve also learned a lot of the history of the country, both ancient and modern, seen a variety of its vistas and cultures, enjoyed meeting its people and feel we appreciate the place somewhat more than we did before we first came. We’ve been extraordinarily lucky with the weather, found gin and tonic in most places and didn’t run out of Twinings finest Earl Grey at any point – a most satisfactory set of achievements all round.

All we have to do now is to get home, a process which will take more than one day. The theory goes that we catch a train tomorrow for the six-hour train journey to Bucharest, overnight in Bucharest and finish by taking a ridiculously early flight back to Blighty. Wish us luck.

Sense of Humor failure

Leave a Reply

Sunday 28 September 2025 – It was a strangely cold morning. The actual temperature wasn’t as low as it had been the day before, when there was frost on the grass and ice making the painted wooden steps to our bedroom somewhat perilous; but it felt colder, and Madame had a wood burner going in the dining area,

which Roşie (Ginger) appreciated rather more than guard duties. The skies were cloudy, and the sun even peeped through from time to time during the day; but we wore jackets for the day’s hike.

The objective for the day was to visit – you guessed it – another monastery, Mănăstirea Humorului. So, Humor Monastery with a bit of Romanian post-appending of definite articles and so forth – officially a 17km walk. Our information had us starting from a town called Solca, some 20 minutes’ drive away and once again Gabriel was our chauffeur and Daniela his lookout because the steering wheel was on the wrong side of the car. They actually dropped us some way beyond Solca towards our destination, thus saving us about 4km of walking along a tarmac road. We were able to start off on a dirt road, which made for a more pleasant walking environment,

at least for the stretch which led to tarmac.

After that, we were on tarmac roads, mainly without sidewalks, for the rest of the walk. To start with, we headed downhill, past a handsome (Catholic) church

and through a village with some idiosyncracies in the housing decor.

Gnomes were a popular decoration

I knew, from the GPS track we’d been provided with, that the route was up and down, with a fairly substantial up in the middle, but hoped that the gentler gradient on offer wouldn’t be too irksome.

Faint hope.

The gradient wasn’t very steep, but there was a 3km stretch where we had to climb 250 metres, which was a relentless and dull trudge. Round every bend, just when you thought “is this the top?”, the uphill road seemed to stretch eternally onwards. However, these things must pass if one simply keeps plodding on, and eventually we got to a point where neither geology or physics could maintain the uphill grind,

at a village called Plesa. It was certainly a plesa to stop and admire the view

and the prospect of sitting down for a bit of a rest. Before Jane allowed us that, though, she had found Something Of Interest for us to investigate, so we headed off down a rough track, which passed a chapel, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

Just past the chapel, on the left, was a prominent rocky outcrop, topped by  a cross.

The ladder there should give you the clue that not all was as it seems; this set of rocks was the basis for a set of artworks sculpted into the stone. They’re not immediately obvious – someone casually walking along the track might well have missed them.

However, courtesy of Jane’s research, we were In The Know, and so we spent some time investigating. Here’s the close up of the shot above, in which the sculptures are much clearer,

and clambering carefully around revealed several more.

Once back on the road we treated ourselves to a few minutes’ rest and a bite to eat before continuing our walk. We went through a couple of reasonably sizeable villages.  One, Solonețu Nou, distinguished itself in two ways: an attractive architectural vernacular for the well housings;

and probably the noisiest selection of house dogs we’d yet experienced in this country.

To our British eyes, the Romanian habit of cooping up their dogs seems harsh; there are quite a few small enclosures with large dogs in them, with barely room to turn round, far less to get exercise. Many dogs are free in gardens, and we even found a handful in the road, who were noisy but didn’t do anything more than bark. I suppose that these are simply guard dogs, there to alert people to intruders, though I don’t know whether these would be human or animal; and in any case there seemed to be no-one home to be alerted (possibly in itself a reason for the dogs to be agitated). We only ever saw a dog being taken out and exercised a couple of times when we were here. Definitely Cultural Dissonance at work, in more ways than one.

We trudged on. Occasionally the view was good,

and the houses we passed engaging,

(this is a sculptor’s house and atelier – we wonder if he has something to do with the stone sculptures); but it was dull work and there was a reasonable amount of traffic to dodge. Eventually, though, we came to the turn off which led to our accommodation, which was called Maridor.  The track to it led us through some kind of logging operation

out a kilometre or so to a small group of houses;

ours was the big yellow one.

It was open, but deserted, except for a young teenage lad who spoke enough English to show us our room and tell us that dinner would be available at 7pm, but who otherwise seemed (a) not to know any further details and (b) not to be very comfortable in his role. No matter; despite the walk only having been about 13km, I was very tired and in need of rest, so we took it easy for a bit before going for a walk. Obviously.

Humor Monastery was a good 2km away, and the exact way in was not obvious. There was a car park (with several coaches in it), surrounded by the usual keen-eyed entrpreneurial locals

but we eventually found out where we could buy tickets, and we followed the crowds in.

To a building site, sadly; most of the area was fenced off.

Actually, we were sort of lucky – pictures online from a few days earlier showed it covered in scaffolding (it looks as though they had been replacing the roof, judging from its light colour) so at least we were spared that, and could get some idea of the frescoes on the outside.

As with the Moldovița monastery, the frescoes on the windward side had faded sadly

but the external narthex ceiling was still in good shape

as were the frescoes on the entrance wall of the church.

Jane was particularly taken by the elephant

which we think is shown as part of the Noah’s Ark story.

Inside the church there was the usual prohibition against photography, but since people were flagrantly ignoring this and the nuns appeared not to mind, I took a few photos of the interior, which, like them all, is spectacular.

Having seen the monastery, we felt that an ice cream would be Just The Thing, so headed back to the kiosk in the retail-heavy car park, only to find it was closed. Well, Sunday, innit? So we decided to investigate the neighbouring church, which looked very impressive

but was closed. Well, Sunday, innit?

So we started the trudge back to Maridor. We passed some interesting railings outside one place, with representations of the signs of the zodiac;

and, just by our turn off into the boondocks there was a shop which appeared to be open. So we went in. The lady in charge didn’t seem too pleased to see us, but we sorted ourselves out with a couple of bananas, and an ice cream each and paid. As we left the shop, she locked up behind us and drove off! We were lucky to get there in the nick of time, which made up for the earlier ice cream disappointment and went some way to dispelling the sadness at the state of the monastery site; it was such a shame to see it so faded, and slightly irritating to have access so limited. We didn’t get a real sense of what the monastery really looked like (hence the title of this page).

Back at Mirador, all was quiet, and we were actually wondering whether we really would get a dinner. But we did. At 6.55, I went out and the only sign of life was the lad, whose name is Vilanel (he’s just socially awkward, not a psychopathic killer in search of Eve); he assured me that there would be dinner at 7, so we went down and joined Julia and Heather, the ladies we’d met at Casa Felicia, and who were basically a day ahead of us on the Natural Adventure itinerary. It was nice to chat to them again and it gave us a chance to find out some useful information, such as getting to and from the final monastery of this trip and also getting to the train back to Bucharest. Vilanel had been very helpful for them organising taxis and telling them what they needed to know. His parents, who run Maridor, didn’t have much English, but Vilanel’s was good – learned, apparently, more from social media than from school.

So, after a very tasty dinner, we established what would happen on the morrow for our monastery visit and also what the schedule would be for the next day. The weather prospects were dismal, which meant we decided on a variation to the suggested itinerary. Exactly what that was, you will be able to find out by coming back to these pages.

Suceviţa – a long walk to a dramatic reveal

4 Replies

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.