Șcheia Fortress (the Western Fortress of Suceava)

Șcheia Fortress, also called the Western Fortress of Suceava, lies on the north-western side of the city of Suceava, at the edge of a forest on a spur of Șeptilici Hill (384 m), more than 80 m above the Suceava river floodplain. It overlooks the Suceava valley to the north, and its position allowed control of the roads from Poland and Hungary. The fortress was built in the late fourteenth century, during the reign of Petru II (Petru Mușat, 1375-1391), at the same time as the Seat Fortress of Suceava, and was deliberately dismantled under Alexander the Good (1400-1432). The reasons are unknown: historians have suggested landslides on the hill or Moldavia's new vassal relationship with Poland. The fortress is not mentioned in the chronicles, and its existence was handed down by oral tradition. The first investigations were made in the late nineteenth century by the architect Karl Adolf Romstorfer, and in 1952-1956 a team of archaeologists carried out five excavation seasons, published in 1960 in the monograph „Cetatea Șcheia” by Gheorghe Diaconu and Nicolae Constantinescu. The fortress was rhomboid, with an inner side of 36 m and an area of 1,450 m², four rectangular corner towers and walls 2.5-3 m thick, built of quarry boulders bound with lime, sand and crushed brick mortar. Today the ruins of the western tower, about 6 m high, and sections of the north-western and south-eastern walls are visible. Finds include silver groats struck under Petru Mușat and Alexander the Good, arrowheads and masons' tools. There is no made-up road to the ruins: they are reached on foot along a forest track from the end of Strada Mihail Sadoveanu in Suceava, through woodland, up to the crest of the hill. The fortress is an archaeological site on the List of Historic Monuments, with code SV-I-s-A-05389 and a protected area of 4.8 ha. Under Government Decision no. 1445/2007 the land of the ruins passed into the administration of the Bukovina Museum Complex in Suceava.