Arbore Monastery

The Church of the Beheading of St John the Baptist stands in the village of Arbore, along the DN2K road between Milișăuți and Solca. Its founder, Luca Arbore, was one of the leading boyars of Stephen the Great: gatekeeper and later governor (pârcălab) of Suceava, hetman and guardian of the young prince Ștefăniță, on whose order he was beheaded at Hârlău in April 1523. The Slavonic inscription above the entrance records that building began on 2 April 1502 and was completed on 29 August of the same year, the feast day of the church. The church, of rough stone with brick vaults, is rectangular outside and trefoil-shaped inside, with no tower. On the west façade the side walls are extended and joined by an arch, forming an exterior niche, a solution that appears here for the first time in Moldavian architecture. The founder's tomb lies in the narthex beneath a Gothic stone canopy bearing the Arbore family arms and an inscription dated 29 April 1503, next to the tomb of his wife, Iuliana. According to an inscription painted above the door of the nave, in 1541 the painter Dragosin, son of the priest Coman of Iași (Dragoș Coman), restored part of the interior painting and painted the exterior walls. The painting has been lost on the north wall but survives on the south façade, with the Akathist Hymn, the Siege of Constantinople and the Last Judgement, and on the west façade, where the niche is covered with dozens of small scenes from the Creation and from the lives of Saints George, Demetrius, Nicetas and Paraskeva. Inside, the votive portraits of the Arbore family stand out, as does the Cavalcade of Emperor Constantine the Great, a scene found in Moldavia only here and at Pătrăuți. The complex is a listed historic monument (LMI code SV-II-a-A-05487), comprising the church of 1502 and the stone bell tower built in 1867. Since 1993 the church has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage site "Churches of Moldavia", together with the other exterior-painted churches of northern Moldavia.