Bogdana Monastery

Bogdana Monastery is a Romanian Orthodox monastery in the town of Rădăuți, northern Romania. Its church is the oldest still standing religious building in Moldavia. The monastery was built by Bogdan I of Moldavia sometime around 1360.

Burials

It was to become his and some the Mușatini voievodes necropolis. Here are buried all the rulers of Moldavia from Bogdan I to Alexandru cel Bun. There are ten graves inside the monastery's church:

seven in the naos:
* Bogdan I
* Lațcu Voievod
* an unmarked grave supposedly Maria's–Bogdan I's wife, or Ana's–Lațcu's wife; the grave is at ground level and not above it as the other ones
* Ștefan I
* Roman I
* Bogdan, brother of Alexander the Good
* Bogdan, son of Alexander the Good
three in the pronaos:
* Doamna Stana, wife of Bogdan III cel Chior and the mother of Ștefăniță Vodă
* Anastasia, daughter of Lațcu
* Bishop Ioanichie

The graves were attended to, and marked properly by Ștefan cel Mare. The rocks on top of the graves were created by Jan at the order of Ștefan cel Mare, "in a style that is different in principle from the oriental decorative sculpture". They are decorated with Byzantine-oriental ornaments like palmata–a stylized palm plant leaf and local motives like leaves of beech, ash tree leaves, elm tree leaves.

Paintings

The first internal painting of the church is from the times of Alexandru cel Bun. In 1558 Alexandru Lăpușneanu started the restoration of the original painting and following year enlarged the church building. Other restorations happened in the 18th and 19th centuries: between 1745 and 1750, in the time of Bishop Iacob Putneanul and in 1880 when Epaminonda Bucevschi, a Bukovinean painter, created the current frescoin tempera.