ARBORE CHURCH - UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE

The Church was built in 1502 as a chapel of Chieftain Luca Arbore’s lordly court, Stephen the Great’s soldier, chief magistrate of Suceava’s city county seat. The faithful soldier had a cruel fate. Suspected of "trickery", without evidence, Luca Arbore was beheaded, together with his two sons, by the nephew of the one whom he had served with so much faith.

Then Arbore's niece called a painter from IaÈ™i to bring the exterior court’s church to life. The result was a masterpiece. The painting from Arbore, which is predominantly green, blows through innovation and originality. On the West side exposure, where the Judgment’s Day was painted, we find a real collection of epitomes: Adam is tilling, Eve is lingering, St. Christopher, whose icon rarely appears in the Byzantine area, is carrying Jesus on his shoulder. Petru Comarnescu, a distinguished Romanian intellectual, says that this masterpiece combines "an Italian Quatrocento vision with the reflective glare of the varnishes and Oriental carpets."

The chieftain’s sons and wife are buried under the gorgeous Gothic funeral monument of the narthex, and the villagers say that the unfortunate chieftain Luca Arbore is buried there.