Bogdana Monastery

Bogdana Monastery stands at 4-6 Bogdan Vodă Street in the town of Rădăuți. The church of St Nicholas was built by Prince Bogdan I (1359-1365), founder of the Moldavian state, and is considered the oldest surviving masonry church in Moldavia. Bogdan I chose it as the burial place for himself and his successors, and under Alexandru cel Bun (1400-1432) it became the seat of the bishops of Rădăuți. In 1559 Alexandru Lăpușneanu added an enclosed porch, as recorded by the Slavonic inscription beside the south door. The church has no tower and a tall, steep roof, and its walls are about 1.40 m thick. The interior, with a central nave and two side aisles separated by six massive pillars, combines Romanesque, Byzantine and Gothic elements. The painting was redone several times; four scenes in the sanctuary survive from the time of Stephen the Great, and the present tempera painting was executed in 1880 by the Bukovinian painter Epaminonda Bucevschi. The nave holds the tombs of Bogdan I, Lațcu, Ștefan I and Roman I, of Bogdan, brother of Alexandru cel Bun, and of Bogdan, his son, as well as of other members of the ruling family, some of them with disputed attributions. Stephen the Great placed carved tombstones with Slavonic inscriptions over the graves of his predecessors, laid between 1479 and 1482; the 1480 inscription on Bogdan I's tomb names the craftsman Jan. The narthex holds the tombs of Lady Stana, mother of Prince Ștefăniță, of Anastasia, daughter of Lațcu, and of Bishop Ioanichie (died 1504). The relics of St Leontie of Rădăuți, hidden in the nave in 1639, were found during the archaeological research of 1974-1977, and the bishop was canonised in 1992. After Austria annexed Bukovina, the monastery was dissolved in 1783 and the church became a parish church. The monastery was re-established on 6 December 1992 with a community of monks, and in 1998 a new church dedicated to St Leontie of Rădăuți was completed. The complex is a class A historic monument (LMI code SV-II-a-A-05603) and comprises the fourteenth-century church, the bell tower of 1781 and the parish house of 1876.