15 kilometers away from the Neamț Fortress, there is another place full of history and legend, as no other place in Romania. The Neamţ Monastery is even older than the reign of Stephen the Great, the famous Moldovan King. Called by some people the “Jerusalem of Romanian Orthodoxy”, the monastery is the oldest monastic settlement in Moldova, with roots that go back to the 14th century, during the time of Peter I Muşat (1375-1391).
The current church inside the monastery was founded by Stephen the Great at the end of the fifteenth century. It is a real architectural, artistic monument, but also impresses as size. Among the most special built by the grand Voivode. When you enter the church, you can admire the Icon of the Virgin Mary painted in 665 on the territory of present Israel, an icon that Prince Alexandru cel Bun received as a gift from the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Paleologus. In the Neamţ Monastery there is the grave of Ștefan Voievod.
One of the first printing houses in the country was at the Neamț Monastery. The settlement has an old monastery library with more than 18 thousand volumes, thus having a special contribution to the development of the Romanian culture and art during the Medieval period.
It is said that Calypso, the Greek girlfriend of the poet Alexander Pushkin, came to the Neamț monastery. Here she spent the last years of her life, disguised as a man, due to the fact that women were not allowed to live in the monastery.
For those with a more developed power of control, the bone under the church of Ioan Bogoslovul can be on the list of objectives visited. Here are kept the skulls of those who were exhumed 7 years after their deaths, as was the tradition in this place a few decades ago.
