Putna

                   The beginnings of Putna Monastery, the most important religious, cultural and artistic centre in mediaeval Moldavia, take us back to the year 1466 when, upon the initiative of Prince Stephen the Great (1457-1504), a church of impressive dimensions was built on a patch of forest cleared for the purpose. The edifice was erected among 1466 and 1469 and consecrated in 1470; to it was added a few more buildings: a princely home standing on the southern side, outer walls and defence towers; all of them completed in 1481.

A few years only after the completion of the buildings and fortifications, a dreadful fire destroyed most of the church, the outer walls and the princely home. The following years, the prince and founder rebuilt the church that soon recovered its former lofty appearance.

In 1536, another conflagration seriously damaged all the buildings; there followed a new restoration completed in 1559, on the initiative and at the expense of Prince Alexandru Lăpuşneanu (1552-1561; 1564-1568).

                      The church was unusually large for its time, but the explanation was that it was built to be the burial place of the Prince, his family and his successors. The thick walls are made of massive blocks of stone, and twelve buttresses support the walls. Originally there were only six, and the other six were added during the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Tower of the Thesaurus is the only one left from the fortifications of Stephen the Great’s monastery. According to the plaque, it was built in 1481 and it was conceived as a two-floor building, with a terrace at the top, with a crenellated parapet. Today it has a sharp roof. Light comes in through narrow windows, decorated with frames of sculpted rock in a laic manner reminding the late gothic. The Entrance Tower, made of a base floor crossed by a passage and a vaulted floor provided with bulwarks, belongs to the 17th – 18th centuries.

Even though the church does not keep anymore decorative elements, bricks and glazed discs, specific for the architecture of Stephen the Great’s time, it resembles other contemporary churches in shape and dimensions. The walls are split in two areas by a belt in a rope shape, with a row of holes sculpted in the plan of the wall in the higher part. The northern wall was strengthened with counterforts added in the 18th century.

        The inside of the church is split into five rooms (porch, pre-nave, the tomb room, nave and altar) and it certainly belongs to he original plan. The two entrance doors situated on the southern and the northern sides of the porch allow the access into the church. A frame of gothic influence especially interestingly made connects the entrance door to the pre-nave.

Its walls host Stephen the Great’s tomb. The oak leaves, the folded trunks forming four heart-shaped medallions and the bull’s head decorate the tombstone deposited in a niche in the tomb room. It was here that the ruler’s last wife, Maria Vochita, the second wife, Maria of Mangop, having a tombstone of oriental inspiration, as well as Stephen the Great’s two sons, Petru and Bogdan were buried.