Stavropoleos Monastery

The monastery Stavropoleos (Romanian Mănăstirea Stavropoleos ) is a Romanian Orthodox monastery in Bucharest. It was built in 1724 in the Brâncoveanu style of the Greek monk Ioanichie Stratonikeas and is considered one of the finest and most important architectural monuments of the Romanian capital. The church is dedicated to the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel.

History

Ioanichie built here initially in 1720 a caravanserai. The church and the monastery were built in the courtyard of the hostel during the second reign of Prince Nicolae Mavrocordat in Wallachia ( 1719-1730 ). With it began in the Romanian principalities in fact the so-called Phanariotenzeit. The monastery was funded (like most Bucharest monasteries of the time) by the income of the associated hostel.

Presence

The monastery is situated in the center of Bucharest, in the same street (Romanian Strada Stavropoleos ), near Calea Victoriei, the most historically significant street in the historic center of Bucharest. From the original building complex only the church has been preserved. Beginning of the 20th century, a new courtyard and a building erected by the architect Ion Mincu, which houses next to the nuns cells, a library, a conference hall and a collection of old icons and religious objects as well as some frescoes of the destroyed by the communist regime in Bucharest churches today.

Among the most distinctive feature of the church is the existing since 1994, both nationally and internationally acclaimed choir ( Grupul Stavropoleos ) that revives the ancient traditions of Byzantine and post-Byzantine music again.