Colț Monastery

Colț Monastery stands at the edge of Suseni, the last village in the Râușor valley, in Râu de Mori commune, on a small terrace across the stream from the ruins of Colț Fortress. Its church is known as the Church of the Cândea Knyazes and is dedicated to All Saints. The church was probably built in the early fourteenth century, a few decades before the neighbouring fortress, by the Cândea family. It is built of rubble stone bound with mortar mixed with crushed brick and has a short rectangular nave, above whose sanctuary rises a three-storey fortified stone tower with arrow slits; the first floor could serve as living quarters. Historians have debated its original purpose, some seeing it as the chapel of the garrison or of the knyaz court, others as the church of an Orthodox monastery. Its history is hard to trace after the mid-sixteenth century, when the Cândea family turned to Calvinism; in the communist period the church was used as a stable. The present appearance of the church is the result of an extensive restoration. Inside, fragments survive of mural painting executed between 1377 and 1450 in the manner of Constantinopolitan art of the Palaiologan period, with scenes from a large Akathist Hymn cycle; conservation work on the painting took place in 2001. Monastic life resumed in the 1990s with a community of monks, and since 2015 the monastery has been a convent of nuns. The church is a Category A historic monument, LMI code HD-II-m-A-03460, and stands next to Colț Fortress (HD-II-a-A-03458).