Curtea de Argeș MonasteryMănăstirea Curtea de Argeș

History

Prince Neagoe Basarab of Wallachia commissioned the church in 1515, hiring the Armenian architect known as Manole of Nicosia; it was finished remarkably fast, in about three years, and consecrated in 1517 with the Patriarch of Constantinople present. It's most famous for the legend attached to its builder: that master mason Manole's construction kept collapsing overnight until he dreamed the walls needed a human sacrifice, and immured his own pregnant wife Ana within them to finish the church — a folk tale still retold across Romania. In 1886 King Carol I designated the church Romania's royal necropolis, and it remains the burial place of the country's kings and queens. Its two spiralling, rope-twisted spires make it one of the most distinctive silhouettes in Romanian religious architecture.