“Three Hierarchs” Monastery – National Pantheon

The church was built between 1637 and 1639 as a princely necropolis by Moldavia’s Voivode Vasile Lupu. On the place of the actual “Gothic Hall” Museum he founded the “Schola Basiliana” with classes held in Paleoslavonic, Latin and Greek. This created an academic tradition in Iași which culminated with the founding of the first modern Romanian university in 1860. Here, on February 27th, 1821, the archbishop Veniamin Costachi blessed the flag of Eteria, which began the fight for freeing Greece from the Ottomans. The tomb of founder family Lupu is found in the church narthex. On the opposite side, the bones of the scholar Prince Dimitrie Cantemir, repatriated from the U.S.S.R. in 1935, were placed, next to those of the Union’s Prince, Alexandru Ioan Cuza. (PHOTO : Alexandra CEHAN)