Welcome to the Painted monasteries from Bucovina

Location:

Bucovina region from Romania is situated in the north part of the country and its neighbor regions are: Maramureș in west, Transylvania in south-west and Moldova in south-east and east. In north is the border with Ukraine, where Bucovina extends its territory and not only on Suceava County’s territory.

Area/Surface:

8.553 km² (on Romania’s territory). Total 10.442 km²

Population:

610.000 people (on Romania’s territory).

The biggest cities:

Suceava, Câmpulung Moldovenesc, Fălticeni, Rădăuţi, Vatra Dornei.

Religion:

Orthodox

Component counties:

Suceava

The painted monasteries from Bucovina

It’s September 2014, a sunny and beautiful month, when together with some friends we’ve decided to go on a 10 days circuit through beautiful Romania. Of course, during this trip we couldn’t miss this worldwide unicity in Bucovina region rich in churches and monasteries, some of a unique color and an unseen beauty in the world. To come and visit them, to understand the way they were built, their purpose and artistic or religious value, it’s not really necessary to be a Christian. You can have any other religion, but the only thing they ask is to keep the silence and to prove you are a good tourist.

Most of the churches and monasteries of a high importance and unique for their external color, are here in the heart of Bucovina, a region in north of Romania and many of these are situated pretty close to each other. It’s important to know that some of them are included in UNESCO World Heritage. During the 2 days spent in Bucovina (in fact was very short because sincerely we tell you that you need minimum one week to visit these beauties and admire them in a relaxed way and not to be on rush all the time) we successfully visited six of these religious wonders (even if in some moments we were rushed and we can’t say we were happy with the short visits) which we will present you next. These six monasteries, but also many others you can visit much easier if you have a car.

We recommend you not to visit more than 2-3 monasteries a day, to have enough time to enjoy them and keep in mind that most of them have a museum included showing different religious art objects and not only, just for you to understand the history of that specific place of worship. If you have minimum 4-5 days, we recommend to find your accommodation in Suceava City, Bucovina’s capital and from here you can organize daily routes. The route we chose was from south starting from Izvorul Muntelui (Mountain Spring) Lake and visiting one by one Agapia, Varatec, Putna, Voronet, Sucevita and Moldovita Monasteries. (Find more journeys on blog.worldlifetimejourneys.com) The most part of Bucovina is in Suceava County, but small territories of Neamt County are on its territory close to Târgu Neamţ City where there are the first two monasteries we visited, but which don’t have the famous external color.

After visiting the last monastery, we feel like we fulfilled a dream, that of strengthening our faith and having a new feeling of internal silence, a thankful feeling that we could get there to see these places of worship rich in religion and history. For many it can be a new way to get to the truth, a good opportunity to discuss with yourself and for Christians as well it could be an excellent occasion to discover or rediscover God, Our Lady, Jesus Christ and all the other saints present here. Don’t be surprised by the fact that most of the monasteries from Bucovina region have a visit tax of 5-10 RON (out of the mass times) and another tax for photographs which is different from a monastery to another. Money are used in the daily life of the nuns and monks present there, but mostly for restoration and maintenance of the monastery complexes. Whenever you choose to go, you will be welcomed as we were and for sure when leaving you’ll have another feeling, you will feel relieved and you’ll be more confident in yourselves and not only. Try to be silent and keep the place clean during your visit and also respect the visit opening and closing times. We wish you a pleasant journey to the painted monasteries from Bucovina!

P.S: We’ll try another day, in other articles to enrich your culture with other wonderful monasteries, not only from Bucovina, but also from whole Romania and even from abroad.