Not far from the city of Gura Humorului, on the valley of an affluent of Moldova, one of the most beautiful monasteries was built more than five centuries ago. The frescoes decorating the exterior and the interior, the originality of the paintings and last but not least the blue colour – so blue –, denote the geniality of the Moldavian artists who, with an acute artistic sense, made out of Voronet Monastery Moldavia’s symbol.

Alexandru Lapusneanu’s achievement rises proudly and imposingly 30 kilometres from Falticeni, in an area of rare beauty.

The story of the monastery’s building goes back a long way in remote, yet vivid legends. They have it that a lone priest lived here who had had advised ruler Lapusneanu to build a monastery on the place where a sycamore maple grew. Thus, the legend has it, was the way the first stone was set for the foundation of what we admire today as the monastery assembly from Slatina.

The locality of Radauti was founded, like the localities of Siret and Baia, before the appearance of the Moldavian feudal State and has acquired a certain importance.

Although very old, the place was rarely mentioned in the historical sources. The beauty of the landscape, as if from fairytales books and the fact that it was here where the oldest stone architectural monument in Moldavia was built, turned the church of Radauti into a place of meditation and pilgrimage.

We know about Putna that it was the first monastery built by Stephen the Great. Moreover, the ruler wanted it to be his place of eternal rest. Thus, like Bogdan I and Alexander the Good, Stephen the Great meant the monastery to be the ruling family necropolis. Stephen the Great proved his appraisal towards the church by the numerous gifts he made. As mentioned in the Putna 1 and 2 Chronicles, the ruler set the foundation in July 1466. The building of the church lasted for three years, but the interior walls were only built in 1481. The blessing of the church took place on 8 September 1470.

Old settlement, the Patrauti village unfolds a long history through the centuries, reminding us of the beginning of the Moldavian State’s glory age. Surrounded by mysterious forests, away from the world, it carries legends in which the dominant figure of Stephen the Great becomes omnipresent. Not far away from Suceava, on the old road on the bank of the river, Stephen the Great founded, in the village of Patrauti, the only nuns’ monastery of his time. The monastery could not survive the obstacles of time, and it was deserted for a long time.

At the end of the 15th century, during the reign of Voevod Alexander the Good, the vornic of Humor built a rock church for the monks, to the wood hermitage of Humor village. Under the ruler’s care and later on under Stephen the Great’s care the Humor monastery developed beside it.

The church built by village chief Ivan turned into ruins during the first decades of the next century.

Close to the foundation attributed to Stephen the Great, his son, Voevod Petru Rares, built in 1532 a church being patronised by Mother Mary’s Dormition. Built without a spire, with only one apse – that of the altar – retreating from those of the nave engraved in the thickness of the walls, having a rectangular plane it denotes a great simplicity just like the construction built by Stephen the Great. The raw rock and the brick that cover it is warmed up by the beautiful fresco paintings made by the Moldavian master painters.

Like the churches of Dolhesti and Balinesti, that of Arbore is situated in a place where the last segments of the Obscina Mountains’ crests meet those of Palin Mountains and where a shred of water completes this superb décor as if made by God for the Moldavians. Legend has it that Arbore was Magister of the village, a great nobleman loving God and the people. In 1503 Luca Arbore – Gatekeeper of Suceava – built, with the help of his landlord, a church in the village which carries his name today. The construction started in the second day of April and was finished the same year, on 29th August.