Sunday September 27th, Capatanii Mountains, 12 cars. Goal: try to cross over the Balota peak, find nice tracks, take pictures of the beautiful scenery. This is just a preview / teaser
Be sure to check back the following days for more pictures of this truly beautiful area. Easier yet, use the RSS feed or just ask feedburner to deliver you new posts by email…
Not to be mistaken for ‘Negru Voda Monastery” in Campulung, the “Cetatuia Negru Voda” is the last corner of the equilateral triangle of rupestrian churches in Arges I visited in October 2008. Each of the three (Corbi, Namaesti and Cetatuia) is special in it’s own way:
- Corbi is special for it’s solitude and modesty
- Namaesti is special for the miracle working icon
and Cetatuia, well, keep on reading!
The first thing that need to be said about Cetatuia is that it is considerably harder to get to it. That’s partly because you need to correctly identify where to stop and leave the car, although there are absolutely NO signs, and then because you have to climb to the top of a hill that is 881 meters high.
The first part is easy: you enter the village of Cetateni and look for the absolute worst place to leave you car unattended: across a half-demolished wooden bridge, near a shady building where gypsies abound. That’s right, THAT is the parking place. There is no other option, unless you want to go around, cross the river and leave the car in the middle of the gipsy village 
Then you cross the bridge by foot and brace yourself for the climb! It’s not that difficult though, there are some steps and you are lead by the icons through the forest. You just need to leave the village behind and head to your right:
Leave the village, climb then turn then climb again
Very early in your ascend you find the sign that this is not an ordinary forest:
Early on there is the first sign that this is not an ordinary forest
And then you just need to follow the icons:
Icons show you the way
Follow the icons
Still more to climb
Just a little bit more left to climb
OK, you got it, there is a beautiful climb through the forest. Where does it take you? Here:
Cetatuia - New Church
As you might have noticed, this is not rupestrian. That’s because this is the ‘new’ building. Here’s the original church:
First Room, home to a catholic 'altar' - not shown here because it's just a carving in the stone wall.
and the church itself:
Cetatuia - Rupestrian Church
In the altar water runs out of the stone wall on the Christian celebration of ‘Healing Spring’ (Izvorul Tamaduirii). Or at least that’s what they say about it. Every church seems to host some miracles…
As most Romanian orthodox churches, this is also small, modest, quiet and secluded, proof of the very hard history we had, continuously besieged, never able to flourish.
There was a nice arrangement of candles around the icon in the left of the previous photo:
Icon and Candles
BUT WAIT!! There is more! Here, on top of the hill, there are much more things to see, for example the Wall of Angels, the Wishes Cross or the Thracian Rider:
The Wall of Angels
I find it very interesting that the painting starts with the hand of God. I have to apologize for the shot, I was not able to choose the time when I reached the place, and they would close soon so I could not wait for the ugly shadow to disappear 
Going further up, to the highest point of the hill, one finds the Wishes Cross:
Wishes' Cross
And if you go out of the compound and around to your right as you exit, you can find this rupestrian painting of a Thracian Rider, told to stand proud on his horse, as a memento of times long gone:
Thracian Rider
Going back down, you can find a junction in the forest road (actually you can not easily find it, there are lot of junctions, you’d better ask), you take this alternative route, follow it carefully so as not to fall on the steep hill covered in leaves and you can reach another platform where you can get an upward look toward the Wishes Cross, and where you can find this very interesting writing on another cross, sheltered by an old tree:
To the forefathers of our kin, Forgiveness
I have never seen such an inscription. I am still debating with myself if it means that we ask for forgiveness FOR our ancestors or TO our ancestors… Makes you ponder, don’t ‘it?
That’s it folks for today’s post, I think we covered enough ground (hill?). I still have some photos from this exact location, but with a different thematic, so I decided not to include them in this post, in order to keep it short (sic!) and with a profound tone.
BUT, stay tuned for more pictures coming soon! (I think this is a good opportunity to remind you about the technologies that can easily keep you tuned: RSS and automatic email delivery of new posts)
PS: THIS is the official site of this monastery.
Just 5 kilometers outside Campulung one finds the village of Namaesti, home to the George Toparceanu memorial house and to a second corner of the equilateral(?) triangle of rupestrian churches in Arges county.
This is a nuns monastery with a very nice compound, with flowers on every parcel of free space. On the flip side, because of it’s placement on a very steep hill with narrow alleys and a thick forest, photo locations are rare. The place is beautiful nonetheless, and I was lucky to get there on a warm, sunny autumn day:
Namaesti Monastery - Full Splendour
I think this angle best illustrates the charm of this place.
Of course I could not resist going on the top to get ‘another angle’:
View from the top
An interesting thing about the way this church is built is that the cross on the top of the tower is not facing the main entrance:
Namaesti Front View - Rotated Cross
BUT WAIT !! There is more! Inside the church there is a ‘miracle working icon’ which people come to visit from all over the country:
Miracle Working Icon
This page has some more historical info in English and these two are in Romanian ( 1 & 2 ). If you would like to go there, here’s a map to show you where it’s placed:
Namaesti on the Map
If anybody wonders about why use Microsoft, it’s easy. Google doesn’t have the slightest clue about Romania.
Ok, here’s just one more photo before we close up:
Pretty Unique Church Tower
If you liked this post, be sure to visit the Stone Ravens Monastery too and to check back for pictures from Cetatuia, the last corner of the triangle. If you do not want to check my blog every day, just click here to get updates automatically delivered to you via email or get this RSS feed‘s adress into your aggregator.
Last Sunday I went on a day trip to complete the triangle of rupestrian monasteries in Arges County. I had visited the Stone Ravens earlier this month and I still had to see Namaesti and Cetatuia Negru Voda, both in the vicinity of Campulung. I was lucky to find some friends that bought a new car, so they were keen to travel as the engine needed to be broken in.
We headed towards Pitesti and stopped at a gas station oly to get some shots of a beautifully coloured tree and then headed on towards Campulung. However, best practices show that if you are on a road and see any sign of a monument, church, etc, you should check it out. We did just that and found this incredibly beautiful photo location in a very poor village. I will not give you any travel details because I need to keep some mystery to go with the title, there is nothing spectacular about this church, apart from the setting I found on that specific day:
The Lost Church
Gateway to Heaven ?
If you liked this post, be sure to SUBSCRIBE to the blog (either by EMAIL or by RSS) because I just got started with the pictures from ths trip 
Let’s take a short(?) break from the Apuseni pictures and see the beautiful autumn colors I found in Arges county:
Autumn Red
This shot was taken at the very begining (one should ALWAYS start with a toilet break) of a one-day long trip in Arges county, to complete the (perfect ?) triangle of rupestrian churches.
Autumn Red
Stay tuned (either by EMAIL or by RSS) for more delightful autumn pictures, and for the definitive answer to the question whether the three rupestrian churches form an equilateral triangle or not…
