Curtea De Arges Monastery

Built by Neagoe Basarab as the architectural crown of Wallachia, fusing Eastern traditions into an unprecedented form, the monastery became Romania's royal necropolis and a pilgrimage site centered on the relics of a child saint. The Legend of Master Manole roots it in the deepest layer of Romanian cultural identity.

Neagoe Basarab, prince of Wallachia, began construction in 1512 during the first year of his reign. The building that emerged over the next five years drew on decorative traditions from across the Eastern Christian and Islamic worlds, creating a synthesis that art historians recognize as without precise parallel. The marble reportedly came from Constantinople. The consecration took place on August 15, 1517, the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos.

The Legend of Master Manole, the foundational myth associated with the site, tells of a master builder commissioned to create the most beautiful monastery in the land. Everything he built by day crumbled by night. He dreamed that for the walls to stand, the first wife to arrive must be walled into the structure. His own wife Ana came first, and as the walls rose around her, she begged to be freed, but Manole sealed her in. The monastery held. When the prince, fearing that Manole might build something even more beautiful for a rival, stranded the builders on the roof by removing the scaffolding, Manole crafted wooden wings to escape but fell to his death. Where he struck the ground, a spring appeared. The legend belongs to a widespread Balkan folk motif of the immured wife, found also in Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, and Greek tradition, but nowhere has it been so completely identified with a specific building.