Sucevița Monastery

Sucevița Monastery lies in the village of Sucevița, in the valley of the river of the same name, 18 km from the city of Rădăuți. Tradition records an earlier wooden church and hermitage here, and the monastery is documented in 1582, under Prince Petru Șchiopul. The stone complex was founded by the Movilă family: the brothers Gheorghe, Metropolitan of Moldavia, Ieremia and Simion, the latter two both rulers of Moldavia. The list of historic monuments dates the Church of the Resurrection to 1583-1586. The church keeps the trefoil plan of Stephen the Great's era, with an enclosed porch, combining Byzantine and Gothic elements; the two small open porches on the south and north sides were added later. The enclosure is a quadrilateral of about 100 by 104 m, with walls 6 m high and 3 m thick, a sentry walk, four corner towers and an entrance tower with a chapel above the gateway. The monastery was the burial place of the Movilă family, and the museum inside the enclosure holds the embroidered tomb covers of Ieremia and Simion Movilă, manuscripts, liturgical books, icons and silverware. The interior and exterior painting, executed at the end of the sixteenth century (CIMEC gives 1596-1601) by the painters Ioan and Sofronie, is the last great ensemble of exterior painting in Moldavia. The backgrounds of the façades are a muted green, in contrast to the blue of Voroneț. The south and east façades show the Akathist Hymn, the Tree of Jesse and the Prayer of All Saints, and the Siege of Constantinople is replaced by the Protection of the Mother of God. The north wall is dominated by the Ladder of St John Climacus, the only depiction of this theme within the UNESCO site. The Last Judgement is painted inside the porch. The complex is a listed historic monument (LMI code SV-II-a-A-05651): the church, the cells, the chapel, the north-east and north-west towers and the enclosure wall. The Church of the Resurrection was added in 2010 to the UNESCO World Heritage site "Churches of Moldavia", inscribed in 1993. The monastery is active, with a community of nuns.