Curtea de Argeş (Romania)

Curtea de Argeş

155 kilometers northwest of Bucharest there is the city of Curtea de Argeş, in which there is the most famous Walachian monument of architecture and spirituality of XVI century. In this small city with the population of around 32 thousand people at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains in XIV century during a short period of time there was Walachian capital. From the prince’s palace at that time almost nothing remains; but a small church (the oldest Orthodox church in Romania) built in Byzantine Style with precious wall murals inside has been preserved very well. After the capital was moved to Tyrgovishte and then to Bucharest Kurtya de Ardzhesh was remembered several times.

For the first time it happened in the beginning of XVI century, when prince Njagoe Besarab, who dreamt of making Walachia a new center of the Orthodox world instead of the Byzantium conquered by the Turks, ordered to build a temple matching his ambitions here. As a result, in 1512-1517, the Episcopate church was built – one of the greatest masterpieces of Romanian architecture, the perfect forms and proportions of which are in accordance with the best Byzantine traditions. The episcopate Church consists of a nave with three apses located in the form of a shamrock. Above the nave a dome on a high drum is rising. Above the western part of the building three more towers with domes are rising; the biggest one of them, located along the axis of the building, inwardly is supported by 12 columns. The façade is rhythmically divided into separate zones located in two levels and decorated with relief ornamental insertions. Rich sculptural ornament gives monumental forms of the church a decorative outlook. Frescoes in the Episcopate Church were made by master Dobromir. The Temple was dedicated on August 15 of 1517 by Universal Patriarch Pheolipt.

Kurtya de Ardzhesh was again remembered in the second half of XIX century, when Romanian king Carol I paid attention to the desolated Cathedral. The Cathedral was restored, and it is this place sanctified by ancient historical tradition that was chosen as the king’s shrine. In the Episcopate Church there are tombs of kings Carol I and Ferdinand, queen Elizabeth (Carol I’s wife); in 2003, on the territory of the monastery king Carol II was reburied, who was dethroned in 1940 and died in exile in 1953.
Not far from the Episcopate Church there is master Manole’s Well, on the very same spot where the person who made the monastery crushed – master Manole. So tradition has it. A beautiful people’s ballad describes tragic sacrifice offered by the master: he walled his own wife into the walls of the church. At the bottom of this legend there is an old belief stating that any great creation requires offering a sacrifice by the creator.

As the legend about master Manole has it, Negru Wode (the Black Prince) with ten companions – nine great masters and Manole, the best of them – were riding on the bank of the river Ardzhesh in search of a site for constructing a monastery. They met a poor little shepherd playing a flute. Negru Wode asked if he had seen an unfinished wall as he was walking with his flock along the river. The shepherd had seen that wall, and when Negru Wode with his companions found it, Negru Wode said that it is that place that he chose for the future monastery. If the masters built the monastery, with which no other monastery in the world could compare, he would pour gold upon them and make them noble men; but if they would not be able to do this he would wall them in alive.

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