Cornu Monastery

Cornu Monastery lies in the village of Cornu de Jos, Cornu commune, Prahova County, at a place called Topseni-Podișor, with views south to the city of Câmpina and west to the Prahova Valley, where the DN1 road runs along the river. It is a convent of nuns, with the feasts of St John the Evangelist (8 May) and St Euphrosyne (25 September). Its founder is the writer Aurora Cornu, a native of Cornu who settled in Paris, the first wife of the novelist Marin Preda. She built the monastery in memory of her parents, Gheorghe and Eufrosina, and of her husband, Aurel Cornea. The idea came to her in 2002, after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and on 30 September 2003 the Cornu Local Council granted the land free of charge to the Archdiocese of Bucharest. Construction began in the mid-2000s, and by spring 2008 a temporary church and a building with cells had been completed. In April 2008, with the blessing of Patriarch Daniel, the community was formed under Abbess Parascheva Bigu with eight sisters; a priest's house and a new building with cells were added later. The ground beneath the buildings is affected by a landslide moving towards the Câmpinița stream, monitored since 2007; in March 2013, when the slide reached the area beneath the cells, 21 of the 25 nuns were moved to other rooms. The monastery is not a listed monument. In the neighbouring village of Cornu de Sus stands the church of the Ascension of the former hermitage of Drăghici Spătarul, from the eighteenth century and rebuilt in 1811-1835, a listed historic monument (LMI code PH-II-m-A-16442), and the village museum of Cornu, with collections of ethnography and local history, operates in the centre of the commune.