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.