Bolnița Church - Bistrița
From what the Craioveşti boyars founded, there is only the small Church of Bolniţa (1520-1521), a modest building (11 m x 4 m), stone-made (stone from downriver) and some brick, boat shaped, no tower, with a clapboard roof. The church has a square nave, with an altary round shaped on the inside, with no pronave. The bolt is cylinder-shaped and has no tower (sign of oldness – resembling Cotmeana). There is an impressive fresco inside, made by Dumitru Chirtop arround 1520, the second oldest in Oltenia after the one at Cozia Monastery (1388), from the late paleologist tradition, when in the Balkans there came artistic elements used by the iconographers from Crete. The Church is dedicated to the “Transfiguration of Our Lord”. Then, the vornic-boyar Şerban Cantacuzino (whose portrait is painted on the lefthand of the door, beside the one of his wife, Adriana) added an opened porch, made by by bricks, on stone pillars, painted by Joseph the Jeromonk and Harinte, in the Brâncoveanu style (1710).
Close by the Bolniţa Church, there also are:
the Bolniţa House – bult by the archimandrite Gavriil Petrovici in 1836, which was used for severel different purposes in time: hospital, school, abbacy, home and forced residence of Marshal Ion Antonescu.
the Tomb of the Teacher – buit in brick by the architect Nae Panait, carrying the remains of Maria Dumitraşcu, the first teacher of the orphanage.
the Tomb of Bishop Bartholomeu Stănescu – monumental buiding in the byzantine style, dating since 1933.
Bishop Bartholomeu’s Villa – built in 1933 by the bishop, an authentic Romanian style building with semicircles arches and open porches, set on pillars in carved and painted wood.
a few edible chestnut trees (Castanea sativa) centennial, in the garden at the western corner of the monastery.
the Bibescu Vodă Bridge, placed where Bistriţa exits its gorges, built between 1846-1848.
the monumental crosses carved in the right wall of the Bistriţa Gorges, where the river exits the limestone walls, dating since the reign of Charles 1st (probably 1867, after the king’s visit).
