„Mihail Sadoveanu” Memorial Museum and „Visarion Puiu” Memorial House

The house stands at 85 Mihail Sadoveanu Street, in the village of Mănăstirea Neamț in Vânători-Neamț commune, on Vovidenia Hill, next to the Vovidenia Hermitage and about 1 km from Neamț Monastery. It is reached by county road DJ 155C. The building was put up in 1937 at the initiative of Metropolitan Visarion Puiu of Bukovina as a bishop's residence. After the metropolitan went into exile in 1944, the house passed to Neamț Monastery and was used as a guest house. It was then made available to the writer Mihail Sadoveanu, who used it as his summer home until his death in 1961; here he wrote eight novels, among them „Nicoară Potcoavă”, „Păuna mică”, „Clonț de fier” and „Lisaveta”. The memorial museum was opened on 26 June 1966 by the Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest, with the support of the writer's family. In 1997 the building was returned to the Metropolis of Moldavia and Bukovina and was named „Casa Memorială Visarion Puiu și Muzeul Mihail Sadoveanu”. Eight rooms are devoted to Sadoveanu: the drawing room with Venetian furniture, his study, his bedroom and an exhibition of his writings. The objects include a Florentine table, an ivory chess set, the family piano, a chest bought by the writer, hunting and fishing gear, paintings by Aurel Băeșu, Jean Steriadi, Ștefan Constantinescu and Iulia Hălăucescu, sculptures by Ion Vlasiu, Milița Petrașcu and Constantin Baraschi, and first editions of his books. One room covers the life and exile of Metropolitan Visarion Puiu, who in 1949 founded in Paris the first Romanian Orthodox diocese abroad and died in France in 1964. The building is a listed historic monument, LMI code NT-IV-m-B-10764. It is owned by the Metropolis of Moldavia and Bukovina, and the museum, run by monks, is open to visitors.