Vărbila Monastery

The former Vărbila Monastery lies in the village of Vărbila, Iordăcheanu commune, about 20 km north-east of Ploiești. The church of the Dormition of the Mother of God bears an inscription dated 1539, which names as founders the grand spatharios Dragomir, the ban Toma and the treasurer Caraci and attributes the building to a master builder named Ștefan. Other documents place the construction of the church around 1510, while the List of Historic Monuments dates the complex to 1535. The historian N. Stoicescu notes that two spatharioi named Dragomir appear in the documents of the period. The ban Toma was executed on the orders of Radu Paisie early in 1536, so the founders were no longer alive when the inscription was made. Damaged over time, mainly by earthquakes, the church was rebuilt in the reign of Matei Basarab by the boyar Pana Filipescu, who added a new inscription. On 6 March 1680, Prince Șerban Cantacuzino granted the monastery parts of the villages of Pătârlagele and Tega in Buzău County. After the law on the secularisation of monastic estates of December 1863, the monastery's lands passed to the state. The complex comprises the church of the Dormition (PH-II-m-A-16854.01), the ruins of the abbot's house (PH-II-m-A-16854.02), the bell tower (PH-II-m-A-16854.03) and the enclosure wall (PH-II-m-A-16854.04), the last three dated to the mid-seventeenth century. The whole complex is a class A historic monument, LMI code PH-II-a-A-16854. Between 2009 and 2013, Vărbila Parish carried out the project "Restoration and enhancement of the Medieval Complex of the former Vărbila Monastery" through the Regional Operational Programme, with a total value of 8.43 million lei. The abbot's house, the enclosure wall, the interior painting and the iconostasis were restored, and the grounds were landscaped. The works were completed in October 2013.