Casa Dosoftei (St Dosoftei the Metropolitan Museum), Iași

Casa Dosoftei, also known as the House with Arcades (Casa cu arcade) after its tall portico of five round arches resting on stone columns, stands at 69 Strada Anastasie Panu in central Iași, near the old Princely Court and opposite St Nicholas the Princely Church. The building was part of the church's enclosure wall, sections of which survive in the walls of the house. The date and original purpose of the house are debated. The national list of historic monuments dates it to 1677, and a long tradition linked it to the residence of Metropolitan Dosoftei and to the printing press he set up within the church precinct (1679-1686). Archaeological excavations in 1966-1968, however, showed that a cemetery stood here in the second half of the seventeenth century, and the historians Dan Bădărău and Ioan Caproșu regard it as an eighteenth-century merchant's shop, the last survivor of the Sfânta Vineri trading quarter. After 1884, when the rebuilding of St Nicholas the Princely Church began, the house served as a chapel. Restored between 1966 and 1969, with the roof rebuilt after an 1845 print, the house became the old literature section of the Museum of Romanian Literature on 7 August 1970. The exhibition includes manuscripts and early books such as the Liturgy Book printed by Macarie in 1508, Metropolitan Varlaam's Cazania of 1643, Dosoftei's Psalter in verse of 1673 and the Bucharest Bible of 1688, together with icons from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and a model of Dosoftei's printing press. In front of the house stands the bronze statue of Metropolitan Dosoftei by Iftimie Bârleanu, unveiled in 1975. The museum, officially named the St Hierarch Dosoftei the Metropolitan Museum, belongs to the network of the National Museum of Romanian Literature in Iași, an institution under Iași County Council, and offers guided tours and workshops. The building underwent a further EU-funded restoration that began in 2018. The house is a class A historic monument, LMI code IS-II-m-A-03963, and the statue of Dosoftei has the code IS-III-m-B-04315.