The Pătrăuţi Church
This church was built by Ştefan cel Mare in 1487, and is considered to be the smallest of all his foundations and the only one made especially for nuns and “...shelter for the soldiers wounded in wars”.
The work of building the Pătrăuţi Church, near Suceava, with the dedication day of Saint Cross’s raising started on the 13th of June 1487. Initially, a votive picture, representing the reigning Ştefan and his family was here.
The architecture is admirably proportioned and represents a value model of the medieval folk epoch, an edifice on a triple cone-shaped plan, with a dome on naos, frames and gothic portals, and facades decorated under derrick cornice with ceramics frieze.
The interior pictures, are the original ones, of high artistic conduct, of which the most important ones are “Tears Scene”(naos) and “The Cavalcade of the Saint Cross”(pronaos) and the votive picture, expressions of feelings and actions against Ottomans, expressions of the age, refined compositions with delicate coloring in Bizantin tradition.