Gateway to Bucovina's painted monasteries — Moldova's medieval capital and beehive huts
Suceava is the capital of Suceava county and the gateway to the painted monasteries of Bucovina — one of the world's most astonishing concentrations of religious art, where the outer walls of Orthodox monasteries built in the 15th–16th centuries by Moldavian princes are covered in extraordinarily vivid exterior frescoes (blues, reds, golds) depicting the Last Judgment, the Siege of Constantinople, and the life of Christ, painted to teach scripture to an illiterate population and miraculously preserved for 500 years. Voronet (the 'Sistine Chapel of the East'), Sucevița, Moldovița, and Humor ar…
Suceava was the capital of the Principality of Moldavia from 1388 to 1564, when Prince Alexandru cel Bun and later Stephen the Great (Ștefan cel Mare) — Moldova's national hero — used it as the base for 47 years of military campaigns against the Ottomans, winning 34 battles. The fortress of Suceava, built in the 14th century and expanded by Stephen, withstood multiple Ottoman sieges. Stephen endowed most of the painted monasteries of Bucovina as acts of thanksgiving for military victories — Voronet was built in 1488 to celebrate a decisive victory over the Turks, and the famous Voronet Blue p…