Bucharest Trip – Day 3 : Stavropoleos Monastery

In the heart of the city’s Old Town is this church which was built in 1724 under the supervision of Ioannikios Stratonikeas. There was an attached inn, which has since been demolished and the church itself has been damaged many times by earthquakes. The church was forcibly closed between 1890 and 1940, but was then reconsecrated in 1940 on the Feast of St. Nicholas.

The entrance to the monastery are from the early part of the twentieth century and it feels quite mystical walking in through these doors.

I wasn’t going to take any internal photographs as the monasteries don’t seem to usually want this, but they’ve perhaps given up here as numerous other visitors were and they didn’t stop anyone. Given that, I thought I’d take a few photos to remind myself of the grand interior. I like these colourful wall paintings and I’ve never quite understood why there was a move away from these in the Protestant and Catholic churches during and after the period of the reformation. This monastery felt the most touristy of the ones that we visited and it felt like it might be quite challenging to try and pray peacefully here given the pedestrian traffic that was coming through, including a number of tour groups.

There’s also an external area where numerous gravestones and old wall paintings are on display. These wall paintings are mostly from monasteries destroyed elsewhere in the city during the appalling maladministration of Nicolae Ceaușescu.

This precinct and lapidarium involved a major restoration and it’s constructed on the former inn which was demolished at the end of the nineteenth century. It’s certainly worth coming to see for any visitor in Bucharest and there are some printed histories inside which give further information about the monastery.