The story of the sacred icons from Neamţ Monastery and Bistriţa Monastery
 
 
 
Testimonies of faith, several icons in the Neamt County have proven to have miraculous properties and have worked wonders for many Christians in need and suffering. When confronted with serious problems, people often resort to divine help. Worshiping the holy icons from Neamţ and Bistriţa monasteries, their hot prayers have been answered.
Located just 16 km away from the town of Târgu Neamţ, Neamţ Monastery, which is a symbol of the Orthodox spirituality and Romanian culture, houses the oldest and …

 
Bistriţa Monastery
 
 
 
Its successive founders are the four great Muşat princes: Alexandru cel Bun, Ştefan cel Mare, Petru Rareş, and Alexandru Lăpuşneanu. The most precious religious artefact of the monastery is St Ana’s Icon reputed for producing miracles, presented as a gift by the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II the Palaiologos and his wife Ana in 1407. In the early fifteenth century, the monk Chiril created here a genuine work of art by copying and decorating with miniatures the Tetraevanghel [the Four Gospels]. The tradition was carried on between the sixteenth and …

 
Durău Monastery
 
 
 
Commissioned in the seventeenth century by one of Vasile Lupu’s daughter, the monastery was rebuilt in 1835, at the expense of some affluent tradesmen in Piatra-Neamţ.
The church – made of stone and brick – combined traditional Moldavian architecture with laic elements. However, the western facade – in neoclassical style – is decorated with a frontispiece with recesses, al fresco icons and an exquisitely carved oak portal.
The painting made a century on by Nicolae Tonitza has a special character both owing to the style and composition of religious scenes and …

 
Petru Vodă Monastery
 
 
 
It is located in a clearing, 6 km away from DN 15B that connects the Poiana Largului crossroads coming from Târgu-Neamţ. Although recently built (1991), the monastery bearing many of the medieval style elements, has quickly become a place for pilgrimage. It is also the only church with outside painted walls in the Neamţ county. In 2006, father Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa, one of the most active anti-Communist dissidents, a former cellmate of the founder of this holy place, was buried here.
 
Photo Album
 
 
Video
 
 

 
Sihăstria Monastery
 
 
 
Continuing our itinerary, only 3 km away, we come across one of the most blessed hermitages of the area, where the hermits secluded here from the Neamţ and Secu monasteries spent their life in humbleness and prayer, seeking peace and solitude.
Later on, the bishop Ghedeon of Huşi commissioned a hermitage in 1655, which was rebuilt between 1824 and 1826, of river stones and bricks owing to the efforts of Veniamin Costache, the Metropolitan Bishop. The then newly built church, dedicated to The Virgin’s Birth, was built in the classical …

 
Secu Monastery
 
 
 
The beginnings of the old monastic settlement in the commune of Vânători-Neamţ are connected to the hermitage Zosima the hermit settled here in 1530. The small church of the hermitage was commissioned by Prince Petru Rareş (1527-1546), on the site of the current church in the monastery graveyard. Then, Nestor Ureche, the high “vornic” [Minister of Internal Affairs] and father of the chronicler Grigore Ureche, commissioned a new church, in 1602, dedicated to St John’s the Baptist Beheading, and part of the households implements necessary to the monastic community.
The …