Moldovița Monastery
Gold and deep blue, and a siege scene that is officially about the year 626 and unmistakably about 1453.
- How long to allow
- About an hour
- Best for
- Anyone interested in how history gets painted
The background
Moldovița was built in 1532 by Petru Rareș, and its exterior was painted five years later, in 1537. The palette is different from Voroneț’s — gold and a deep, warm blue rather than the famous cold one — and the church sits inside a walled enclosure with a gate tower.
The siege that is two sieges
The south wall carries a Siege of Constantinople. Its official subject is the Avar and Persian assault on the city in 626, an event with a long liturgical tradition behind it.
Look at what the painters actually did. The besiegers are dressed as Ottomans and the artillery is gunpowder artillery. The picture is nominally about 626 and is visibly about 1453, painted in a principality that was, in 1537, negotiating its own survival with the empire that had taken the city.
Once you have seen it, the whole tradition of exterior painting reads differently. These walls were not decoration. They were arguments, put where the congregation and everyone passing the gate would see them.
Prefer to have the route organised for you?
Guided private trips and custom itineraries are arranged externally, with a local driver-guide.
View private toursOther places near Suceava
Voroneț Monastery
The most famous of the painted churches, and the one that gave a colour its name. Its west wall carries a Last Judgement painted across the…
Sucevița Monastery
The last of the painted churches and the most heavily fortified — a monastery inside real defensive walls, carrying a Ladder of Virtue thirty-two rungs high.
Putna Monastery
Stephen the Great's own foundation and his burial place. Not one of the painted churches — which is the first thing worth knowing about it.
Humor Monastery
The smallest and quietest of the main group, in reddish-brown rather than blue, with an open porch and a defensive tower beside it.
Suceava Fortress
The seat fortress of medieval Moldavia, on the ridge above Suceava. It held against Mehmed II — the sultan who had taken Constantinople twenty-three years earlier.
Marginea Black Pottery
A village where the pots come out of the kiln black, because the fire is starved of air on purpose. The workshops are working ones, not…