Documented
The founder, the Ottoman occupation of 1595 and Radu Mihnea’s rebuilding are all on record. Radu Mihnea’s tomb is inside the church.
03Places of BUCARESDAVA
Holy Trinity / Radu Vodă
The princely monastery known today as Radu Vodă, reconstructed as it may have appeared before its destruction in 1595.
- Shown
- c. 1575
- Period
- Founded 1568–1577
- Status
- Standing, rebuilt
- Location
- Strada Radu Vodă 24A
01The history
A monastery turned into a fortress.
Alexandru II Mircea and his wife Ecaterina founded the monastery during his reign, which ran from 1568 to 1577, and dedicated it to the Holy Trinity. Sources give its founding year as 1568, 1570 or 1577. It stood on a hill on the bank of the Dâmbovița.
In 1595 Sinan Pasha’s army occupied Bucharest, took the monastery and fortified it. When the Ottomans withdrew after Michael the Brave’s victory, they destroyed the fortifications they had built and the monastery with them.
Radu Mihnea rebuilt it in stone in 1613–1614, and his name stayed with it. The earthquake of 1802 damaged the bell tower. In 1875 the old walls and monks’ cells were blown up on the orders of Titu Maiorescu, then minister of religious affairs, and a seminary building followed from 1893. After the 1940 earthquake the church was rebuilt once more under Patriarch Justinian, who is buried there.
- 1568
Alexandru II Mircea founds the Holy Trinity monastery.
- 1595
Ottoman troops fortify it, then destroy it as they withdraw.
- 1614
Radu Mihnea’s stone church is consecrated.
- 1875
The old walls and cells are blown up.
- 1893
Work starts on a seminary building.
- 1979
The church is reconsecrated after its rebuilding.
02Three ways to read it
What is known, what is told, what is imagined.
Legend
On the same street stands the small Bucur Church, once the monastery’s chapel. Tradition says the shepherd Bucur founded it. Nobody knows when it was built: the dates proposed run from 1416 to the 18th century.
BUCARESDAVA
The monastery belongs to Chapter III, set in 1595, when war and fire reach a mostly wooden city.
03Today
What remains today.
The church, cells, inner courtyard and bell tower stand at Strada Radu Vodă 24A, about ten minutes’ walk from Piața Unirii. Much of what stands was rebuilt after the 1940 earthquake. The church keeps relics of St Nectarios, brought from Aegina in 2002.