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is a walled stauropegic Russian Orthodox monastery of St. Nicholas the Miracle-Worker located in a suburb of Moscow formerly known as Ugreshi and now called Dzerzhinsky.
Ettal Monastery.
In 1328, the Holy Roman Emperor was returning from Rome with what was considered a miraculous statue of Mary and Jesus. He was in political and financial trouble, so to please God, he founded a monastery with this statue as its centerpiece. The monastery became important as a place of pilgrimage.
Chemre Monastery or Chemre Gompa is a 1664 Buddhist monastery, approximately 40 kilometres east of Leh in Ladakh, northern India. It belongs to the Drugpa monastic order. It was founded in 1664 by the Lama Tagsang Raschen and dedicated to King Sengge Namgyal.
The monastery is a venue for the festival of sacred dances which takes place on the 28th and 29th day of the 9th month of the Tibetan calendar every year.
The monastery comprises a number of shrines, two assembly halls (Du-Khang) and a Lama temple (Lha-Khang). The main attraction of the monastery is the one storey high statue of Padmasambhava. Another big attraction is the 29 volume scripture written in silver and golden letters.
I think what makes this Monastery is the people. The gent next to me, in the video, is of the Anglican Faith, well schooled in religious history. He had been coming here for around 20 years. I asked him why hadn't he converted to Russian Orthodox, the Abbot thought this highly amusing. He was about to head off and cut firewood with the monks. He had been friends with the Abbot since first coming here. The night before, the Abbot invited me to chat with him and his friend. The Abbot is a highly intelligent person, with diverse interests. Father "G", the candle maker monk, is too, I think. We shared coffee and chatted, along with his "biological" father, later in the morning. This Monastery is engaged with the community, servicing the people of the Eden/Monaro and Canberra. At Easter 6 monks looked after around 230 people. The monks have a disciplined life, eating two meals a day and working long days, yet they clearly enjoy life and laugh easily.
Leh: Thiksey Monastery (June, 2016)
Title:
People:
Place:Thiksey
Date:2016:06:23 14:21:34
File:DSC01378.jpg
Prayer meeting in progress in the central hall of the monastery where in hundreds of monks recited their prayers and performed other rituals.
Lhatse - Sakya - Shigatse - Tibetan Plateau - Tibet Autonomous Region - China
Narthang Monastery - Sakya Monastery
Narthang Monastery is a monastery located 15 km west of Shigatse in Tibet. Founded in 1153 by one of the disciples of Atisha, Nathang was the fourth great monastery of Tsang with Shalu Monastery, Sakya and Tashilhunpo. Narthang was first famous for its scriptual teaching and monastic discipline. After the fourteenth century it gained great eminence as the oldest of Tibet's three great printing centres (the other being the Potala and the Derge).
The Fifth Panchen Lama took control of the monastery and it continued printing the Buddhist scriptures the Kangyur and the Tengyur up until 1959. Narrthang's five main buildings and large chanting hall were razed to the ground by the Chinese in 1966. They had contained priceless 14th century murals possibly painted by the artist scholars of nearby Shalu Monastery. Today only the mud-brick foundations can be discerned although parts of the Mongolian styled high-fortress walls are still standing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narthang_Monastery
Shigatse, officially known as Xigazê, is a prefecture-level city of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, It is located within the historical Tsang province of Tibet.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigatse
With jeep on the road.
The Tibetan Plateau, also known in China as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qingzang Plateau or Himalayan Plateau, is a vast elevated plateau in Central Asia or East Asia, covering most of the Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai Province in western China, as well as part of Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir state of India. It stretches approximately 1,000 kilometres north to south and 2,500 kilometres east to west. With an average elevation exceeding 4,500 metres , the Tibetan Plateau is sometimes called "the Roof of the World" and is the world's highest and largest plateau, with an area of 2,500,000 square kilometres (about five times the size of Metropolitan France). Sometimes termed the "Third Pole", the Tibetan Plateau is the headwaters of the drainage basins of most of the streams in surrounding regions. Its tens of thousands of glaciers and other geographical and ecological features serve as a "water tower" storing water and maintaining flow. The impact of global warming on the Tibetan Plateau is of intense scientific interest.
is a walled stauropegic Russian Orthodox monastery of St. Nicholas the Miracle-Worker located in a suburb of Moscow formerly known as Ugreshi and now called Dzerzhinsky.
august 2010- a great journey on the route: Suzana Monastery - Cheia Monastery - Slanic (The Salt Mine)
Cheia Monastery (Romanian: Mănăstirea Cheia), a Romanian monastery for monks dedicated to the Holy Trinity, is located on the right bank of Tâmpa Creek, southeast of Cheia, Prahova County. First attested in 1770, it was destroyed by the Ottomans, then ravaged by fire. The current church was built of stone between 1835 and 1839 and painted by Gheorghe Tattarescu in 1837.
Situated in the Teleajen Valley, it is surrounded by Ciucaş Mountain and Zăganu Mountain.
Heights you can se around here:
* Bratocea pass (1263 m)
* Tesla peak (1613 m)
* Ciucaş peak (1954 m)
* Valea Berii (the Beer Valley)
* Muntele Roşu (the Red Mountain)
* Gropşoare peak (1833 m)
* Zăganu peak (1817 m)
* Cheia resort (875 m).
Stauropigial Monastery of St. Onuphrious in Jableczna, 2004.06.25.
Liturgy served near Belarusian Border, close to river Bug.
Starts at 4.00 AM.
more on www.orthphoto.net
Leh: Thiksey Monastery (June, 2016)
Title:
People:
Place:Thiksey
Date:2016:06:23 15:19:15
File:DSC01451.jpg
One of the monasteries close to Lhasa. The middle stairs were only used by the Dalai Lama. Left hand stairs for going up and right hand stairs for going down.
From Wikipedia:
Drepung Monastery (literally “Rice Heap” monastery),[1] located at the foot of Mount Gephel, is one of the "great three" Gelukpa university monasteries of Tibet.
The other two are Ganden and Sera. Drepung is the largest of all Tibetan monasteries, and indeed at its peak was the largest monastery of any religion in the world. It was founded in 1416 by Jamyang Chojey, a direct disciple of Je Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelukpa school. It is located on the Gambo Utse mountain, 5 kilometers from the western suburb of Lhasa.
F. Spencer Chapman reported, after his 1936-37 trip to Tibet, that Drepung was at that time the largest monastery in the world, and housed 7,700 monks, "but sometimes as many as 10,000 monks."[2]
October 2019
St Barnabas' Monastery and Museum, Famagusta, Cyprus
Saint Barnabas Monastery & Museum
The Monastery of St. Barnabas is at the opposite side of the Salamis-Famagusta road, by the Royal Tombs. You can easily tell it by its two fairly large domes. It was built to commemorate the foremost saint of Cyprus, whose life was so intertwined with the spread of the Christian message in the years immediately following the death of Christ.
Barnabas was a native of the ancient city Salamis, and was a Jew, though his family had been settled for some time in Cyprus. His real name was in fact Joses, or Joseph; Barnabas was the name given to him by the early Christian apostles because he was recognised as `a son of Prophecy', or as Luke puts it `a son of consolation'. There is no contradiction here. Luke is merely emphasising that one of the great historic functions of prophecy was to console the believer and keep him in the faith.
He was reputed to be an inspired teacher of Christianity, but more than that he played a very great role in the development of early Christianity. He was also the man to acknowledge that Paul's conversion to Christianity was absolutely sincere, and above all he recognised the genius of Paul, whom he introduced to the Christian fellowship in Jerusalem. When Barnabas was later sent to Antioch to supervise the work of the early Church there, he had Paul as his assistant. Later still, of course, he undertook his great missionary journey with Paul, visiting among other places, his own country of Cyprus.
Finally, of course, we know certainly that Paul and Barnabas had a strong diffrence of opinion about Barnabas' nephew, John Mark, and the two friends parted company. Paul wrote later that the rift was healed but by that time Barnabas was probably already back in Cyprus.
The monastery which bears Barnabas' name was originally built in the last part of the fifth century, to commemorate the discovery of his body, and the dignity and the seniority it brought to the early Christian Church of Cyprus. Parts of the early building have been preserved in the more recent churh which was built by Archbishop Philotheos in 1756. The money for the purchase of the land on which the monastery was built, is supposed to have been provided by the Byzantine Emperor at the time Barnabas' body was found.
When you look carefully at the church you will notice the traces of the original fifth century building and also places it seems to have been enlarged and changed, probably in the very late mediaeval period. But in the main it is fairly conventional Greek Orthodox architecture of the eighteen century.
On one of the walls, the story of how Barnabas' body was shown to the Archbishop in a dream, is rendered in small pictures. These were done in the present century, but some of the icons and statues are a good deal older.
On another wall, somewhat incongruously, hang wax replicas of limbs in a gesture of gratitude for the ailing limbs which the Apostle Barnabas is supposed to have miraculously cured. Close by, the image of st. Heraklion stares at you from every angle you choose. All these items, ancient and modern have been very well looked after and are shown with great oride by the curator of the church.
The marble columns supporting the domes are conspicuous and rather spectacular. It is impossible to be certain, but these may well have come from Salamis. In one sense, the little rock tomb in which Barnabas is supposed to have been found gives the authentic flavour of the Christian evangelist and martyr much more effectively.
The church of St Barnabas is exactly as it was when its last three monks left it in 1976. The church apparatus ; pulpits, wooden lectern, and pews are still in place. It houses a rich collection of painted and gilt icons mostly dating from the 18th century.
The carved blocks and capital blocks in the garden and cloister courtyard come from Salamis. The black basalt grinding mill come from Enkomi.
The cloister of the monastery have recently been restored and at present serve as the archaeological museum. This section houses an exquisite collection of ancient pottery displayed chronologically, representing the changes in morphology and decoration of pottery in Cyprus from the Neolithic to the Roman times. The rest of the collection covers bronze and marble art objects.
The monastery of Geghard (Armenian: Գեղարդ, meaning spear) is a unique architectural construction in the Kotayk province of Armenia, being partially carved out of the adjacent mountain, surrounded by cliffs. It is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
While the main chapel was built in 1215, the monastery complex was founded in the 4th century by Gregory the Illuminator at the site of a sacred spring inside a cave. The monastery had thus been originally named Ayrivank, meaning "the Monastery of the Cave". The name commonly used for the monastery today, Geghard, or more fully Geghardavank (Գեղարդավանք), meaning "the Monastery of the Spear", originates from the spear which had wounded Jesus at the Crucifixion, allegedly brought to Armenia by Apostle Jude, called here Thaddeus, and stored amongst many other relics. Now it is displayed in the Echmiadzin treasury.
The spectacular towering cliffs surrounding the monastery are part of the Azat river gorge, and are included together with the monastery in the World Heritage Site listing. Some of the churches within the monastery complex are entirely dug out of the cliff rocks, others are little more than caves, while others are elaborate structures, with both architecturally complex walled sections and rooms deep inside the cliff. The combination, together with numerous engraved and free-standing khachkars is a unique sight, being one of the most frequented tourist destinations in Armenia.
(Wikipedia)
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Having visited famous temple of Garni, we headed more to the north to see the tranquil Geghard monastery; when one manages to leave the crowds and find a quiet place, spirituality may come - the place is really magical...
Amarbayasgalant Monastery is one of the three largest Buddhist monastic centers in Mongolia. The monastery complex is located in the Iven Valley near the Selenge River, at the foot of Mount Büren-Khaan in Baruunbüren sum (district) of Selenge Province in northern Mongolia. The nearest town is Erdenet which is about 60 km to the southwest.
Amarbayasgalant was one of the very few monasteries to have partly escaped destruction during the Stalinist purges of 1937, after which only the buildings of the central section remained. Many of the monks were executed by the country's Communist regime and the monastery's artifacts, including thangkas, statues, and manuscripts were looted, although some were hidden until more fortunate times.
Today, only 28 temples remain. Restoration work began in 1988 with funds provided by UNESCO and private sources and some of the new statuary was commissioned in New Delhi, India.
Look out for the monument half way up the far right side of this 360° panorama.
Ad Deir (The Monastery) is a monumental building carved out of rock in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra. Built by the Nabataeans in the 1st century and measuring 50 metres wide by approximately 45 meters high. Architecturally the Monastery is an example of the Nabataean classical style. It is the second most visited building in Petra after Al Khazneh (The Treasury). It was dedicated to Obodas I and is believed to be the symposium of Obodas the god. This information is inscribed on the ruins of the Monastery. The building was probably later consecrated as a church by Byzantine Christians, crosses have also been carved into the ruins.
Ad Deir is 40.2 meters wide and is carved deep into the side of the mountain. The door itself is 8 meters high. The main inside chamber is huge. It is 11.5 meters by 10 meters, and is lit only by light coming through the 8 meter high doorway.
Moldova - Hancu monastery.
Hancu Monastery was raised up on a nuns’ hermitage in 1678 by the Great High Steward Mihail Hancu due to the wish of one of his daughters, who accepted monasticism under the name of Parascheva. The hermitage had the name of Viadica until the 17th century.
Because of the Tartars invasion, the nuns left the hermitage for another place approximately at the half of the 18th century. After the Russian army arrived in Basarabia under the command of Field Marshall Rumeantev in 1770-1772, the first Hancu family successors asked the hieromonah Varlaam from the Varzaresti Monastery to take care of the abandoned hermitage. Varlaam together with a group of monks, who came with him, took care of the household, and repaired the cells and in time the monastery became a living place for the monks.
In 1817 all the monks at the monastery were Moldovans, who took the habit being hallowed by the Husi bishops and the Metropolitan Bishop of Moldova. They all had good connections with the hermitages and the monasteries from all over Moldova and the Athos mountain. There were three Russian hieromonks in the monastery as well, who ran away from the liberal stream of Queen Catherine the Second. The books for the church and the manuscripts were written in Romanian.
Back in 1817 the church was built of wood, fenced, glued with clay and whitewashed. The roof of the church was made of shingle. Also, it had a belfry attached to the church. The church had an iconostasis of wood with delving flowers gilt with gold. The walls inside of the church were fashioned with many beautiful icons, 8 of which were painted on planks of wood and gilt with gold.
Hancu was the first monastic settlement of Basarabia, where the community life was introduced approximately in 1820-1822.
Both, the inner life of the hermitage, and its community household, developed significantly during the supervision of abbot Dosoftei, Bulgarian by origin.
Since its existence, more precisely at the beginning of 1836, the hermitage is considered to be a monastery. On the place where the wooden church was standing, he raised up in 1835 a church built in stone with the festival Saint Pious Parascheva, but in 1841 he had built another one dedicated to the Holy Virgin Dormition festival. He built cells for the monks as well, brought water into the monastery and took care of the administration bettering.
At the end of the 19th century, the monastery was known under the name of Hancul-Parascheva.
The lands, the fortune and the buildings of the monastery were nationalized in 1944, but in 1965 the monastery had been closed and the monks were chased away.
In 1978 the monastic ensemble was distributed to the Institute of Medicine from Chisinau that set working a sanatorium for people suffering of tuberculosis and opened a leisure station for students and employees. Saint Pious Parascheva summer church was later turned into a club.
Hancu Monastery was re-established as a place for monks in 1990. There is no information about the activity of the monks during those two years they have spent in the monastery. In 1992 the community of monks was abolished.
In the spring of 1992 the monastery for nuns is being established at Hancu. On the 10th of September, 1992, the reconstruction of the monastery was started. In 1993 the reparation of Holy Virgin Dormition winter church had been finished.
The church was framed within the body of the priory, which was built in 1841. It was painted provisionally and hallowed in the same year. In 1998 the interior of the church was repainted.
Saint Pious Parascheva summer church was erected in 1835 and repaired not earlier than 1996.
Three old buildings raised up in 1841 remain untouched on the monastery’s territory. Nuns and sisters started living there after a major overhaul. The number of the ones living there estimates 58 in 1995.
The monastery of Geghard (Armenian: Գեղարդ, meaning spear) is a unique architectural construction in the Kotayk province of Armenia, being partially carved out of the adjacent mountain, surrounded by cliffs. It is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
While the main chapel was built in 1215, the monastery complex was founded in the 4th century by Gregory the Illuminator at the site of a sacred spring inside a cave. The monastery had thus been originally named Ayrivank, meaning "the Monastery of the Cave". The name commonly used for the monastery today, Geghard, or more fully Geghardavank (Գեղարդավանք), meaning "the Monastery of the Spear", originates from the spear which had wounded Jesus at the Crucifixion, allegedly brought to Armenia by Apostle Jude, called here Thaddeus, and stored amongst many other relics. Now it is displayed in the Echmiadzin treasury.
The spectacular towering cliffs surrounding the monastery are part of the Azat river gorge, and are included together with the monastery in the World Heritage Site listing. Some of the churches within the monastery complex are entirely dug out of the cliff rocks, others are little more than caves, while others are elaborate structures, with both architecturally complex walled sections and rooms deep inside the cliff. The combination, together with numerous engraved and free-standing khachkars is a unique sight, being one of the most frequented tourist destinations in Armenia.
(Wikipedia)
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Having visited famous temple of Garni, we headed more to the north to see the tranquil Geghard monastery; when one manages to leave the crowds and find a place with a view, spirituality may come - the place is really magical...
The Lepavina Monastery is a Serb Orthodox monastery dedicated to the Presentation of Mary and located in Croatia. Established in 1550.
The Betania Monastery of the Nativity of the Mother of God commonly known as Betania or Bethania is a medieval Georgian Orthodox monastery in eastern Georgia, 16 km (10 miles) southwest of Tbilisi, the nation’s capital. It is a remarkable piece of architecture of the "Golden Age" of the Kingdom of Georgia, at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, and is notable for its wall paintings which include a group portrait of the contemporary Georgian monarchs.
History:
Betania is located in the isolated wooded valley of the Vere river in Kvemo Kartli, 16 km (10 miles) southwest of Tbilisi. The name of the monastery is derived from that of the village Bethany in Palestine recorded in the New Testament as the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, as well as that of Simon the Leper.
The history of the monastery is poorly recorded in Georgian historical tradition. It was a familial abbey of the House of Orbeli. The donor image of Sumbat and Liparit Orbeli before the Mother of God appears on the south transept of the monastery. The Orbeli were temporarily dispossessed of their estates by the royal crown at the end of the 12th century, but their later offshoot, the Gostashabishvili family, appear to have been the monastery’s owners in early modern Georgia.
A series of conflicts and foreign invasions that fill the history of Georgia left the monastery depopulated and half-ruined. It was restored, in the latter half of the 19th century, through the efforts of Hieromonk Spiridon Ketiladze who resigned as an abbot in 1922 and was succeeded by Hieromonk Ilia Pantsulaia. Both these monks were shot during the Soviet purges. Betania remained the only operating Georgian monastery, though unofficially, until 1963 when it also became defunct for the next 15 years. In 1978, the energetic Patriarch of Georgia Ilia II succeeded in obtaining permission from the Soviet authorities to reopen a monastery at Betania. In the 1990s, the cloister was refurnished and the local monastic community grew in size and influence.
Architecture:
The monastery’s territory seems to have been surrounded by a massive wall, but only dismembered stones scattered in the adjacent forest have survived of it. The extant edifices are a principal domed church of the Nativity of the Mother of God (constructed at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries), a smaller hall church of St. George (1196), and a ruined tower.
The church of the Nativity of the Mother of God is a cross-in-square design with a dome and built of stone, with some external carved decoration in the eastern façade where traditional niches have multifoil or scalloped tops connected to the frame of the middle window. Its high dome, slightly shifted to the east, rests upon the two westerly located freely standing pillars and ledges of the altar. The southern entrance portal is fronted by the gate roofed with a star-shaped vault. Modern scholars have surmised that the church is actually an expanded, domed and decorated version of an earlier basilica probably dating from the 10th century.
Murals:
The interior is adorned with significantly damaged murals which mark one of the high points of medieval Georgian wall painting. The conch of the altar contains a scene of Supplication of which only the fragments of the figure of an enthroned Christ have survived. The walls of the apses behind the altar are decorated with the frescos of Prophets holding scrolls with Georgian inscriptions. The northern wall is occupied by a cycle of the Passion of the Christ while the southern wall contains the scenes from the Old Testament and the western – those of the Last Judgment.
The north transept of the monastery is notable for the depiction of the Georgian monarchs dating from c. 1207. These are the portraits of George III (r. 1156-1184), his daughter Queen Tamar (r. 1184-1213), and the son of the latter George IV (r. 1213-1223). The Russian prince Grigory Gagarin discovered and cleaned the image of Tamar in 1851, and published his drawings and reports the same year. George IV is shown as a beardless young man in Georgian court robes, but he wears a crown and sword. These attributes suggest that George is depicted as a young king after his co-coronation with his mother, which took place after the death of his father, David Soslan, in 1207. The painting, therefore, helps to determine the approximate date of the Betania church. An important irregularity observed by modern scholars is that none of the secular figures at Betania has a halo, an attribute that was normally used in Georgian imagery to distinguish a royal person from the rest of society.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Varatec Monastery - Neamt county - Romania
Văratec Monastery is a Romanian Orthodox nun monastery located in north-eastern part of the country, in Văratec village, Agapia Commune, Neamţ County. It is situated at 12 from Târgu Neamț city and 40 km from Piatra Neamț city. It is the largest nun monastery in Romania, with more than 400 nuns living here.
This monastery -- Snagov Monastery -- is located about 25 miles north of Bucharest in Ilfov County. (It's close enough that I'm including it as a Bucharest album.)
So what's the deal with Snagov Monastery? Honestly, I don't know. It seems there's no consensus on much of anything here, other than that the monastery exists. Nobody is sure when it was built, exactly, and that may have part to do with the reason it was built...if you choose to believe that, too.
This is (or not?) Vlad Tepes's final resting place. (For sake of argument, I'll say it is, though...who knows?) Vlad's English sobriquet is Vlad the Impaler (Tepes in Romanian), and he was...rather cruel. By the time of his death, he had many enemies, and it seems he was beheaded as his form of demise. This monastery was possibly built Vlad himself (at his orders, that is), or at the request of his grandfather.
Vlad's "tomb" in the middle of the church floor. Well...as he had a lot of enemies, one thought is that his burial spot was hidden. Some say he was -- and still is -- buried here, but deep under the floor, and animal bones were buried above him to throw off anyone who found the location. Well...the place was excavated, animal bones were found, and (I guess?) they didn't dig deeper. Short answer...nobody knows and it serves tourism's interests not to confirm. I'll leave it at that.
As for the aesthetics of the monastery, it's a standard Greek Orthodox church on the inside. That means...lots of paintings covering 100% of the wall. (This small monastery, though, is not a great example of Romanian churches; the churches up in Transylvania at Maramures are all much better representations. The painted monasteries there are all UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Having said all of that, if you're in Bucharest, this is worth seeing just for the fun of it. Day trips are cheap and easy.
Rila Monastery was founded in the 10th century by St John of Rila, a hermit canonized by the Orthodox Church. His ascetic dwelling and tomb became a holy site and were transformed into a monastic complex which played an important role in the spiritual and social life of medieval Bulgaria. Destroyed by fire at the beginning of the 19th century, the complex was rebuilt between 1834 and 1862. A characteristic example of the Bulgarian Renaissance (18th–19th centuries), the monument symbolizes the awareness of a Slavic cultural identity following centuries of occupation.