DINTR-UN LEMN MONASTERY

3 km north of Frâncești, in the hamlet of Dezrobiți, the Dintr-un Lemn monastery is located on the banks of a small river, at the end of an alley lined with weeping willows. More friendly and welcoming than any of its neighbors, it's sure to enchant you. After passing through a portal decorated with paintings depicting Saint Peter and marine motifs, you enter a first courtyard, full of flowers, with a well and beautiful white monastic buildings. Passing under another porch and next to an unexpected sea anchor (the monastery protects sailors and aviators, who come here to meditate), you enter the second, smaller courtyard, which houses the most recent church, with its beautifully decorated walls. A little further up, past the Pope's house, orchards and frolicking cats, you come to a small wooden chapel surrounded by tall, old oak trees. The chapel, founded in 1635, gave its name to the monastery. Indeed, Dintr-un Lemn means "of a single wood", and it is said that the trunk of a single oak was enough to build it! The paintings inside the church, a little darkened by candle smoke, date from the early ^18th century. Its iconostasis, carved from limewood in 1814, is a true work of art, as are many of the wooden icons that adorn the church.

The monastery is also associated with a love story. The writer Anton Pann is said to have fallen in love with a 16-year-old nun here, disguising her as a boy in order to kidnap her.