Bistrița Monastery in Vâlcea

The Bistrița Monastery, in the village of Bistrița, Costești commune, Vâlcea County, was founded by the Craiovești boyars at the end of the fifteenth century. The monastery is at the foot of the Buila massif and is linked to the preservation of the relics of Saint Gregory the Decapolitan, brought here in 1497.

The large church, rebuilt in the nineteenth century, has painted decoration by Gheorghe Tattarescu. The infirmary church survives from the older complex, with frescoes from the medieval tradition. The buildings around the courtyard and the book collections recall the monastery’s cultural role and its workshops for copying and printing church texts.

Photo: Miehs · Photo source · CC BY-SA 3.0 ro. Proportional resizing and center crop to 650 × 400 px; removal of technical metadata.