MONASTERY OF COSĂUTI

Founded in 1721 by the monks Pavel Dubină and Gavrii, this monastery is located on the site of a former hermitage. The village of Cosăuți is ancient and was already mentioned in documents in 1509. In a document written by Prince Constantine Racoviță in 1757, we learn that the owner of the village was the boyar Nicolae Racoviță. In 1781, the boyar Scarlat Sturdza took possession of it but he was forced to flee to Russia in 1791 at the end of the Russian-Turkish war. The bishopric of Huși recovered the village and the hermitage in 1793. Metropolitan Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni raised the hermitage to the status of a monastery in 1812-1813 but it was closed by the ecclesiastical authorities in 1833. The monastery reopened on 22 April 1990 and work began on the new church of the Protection-of-the-Mother-of-God Protection (in the 18th and 19th centuries, another church existed, that of the Nativity-of-the-Mother-of-God).

The site is classified as a national heritage site and the whole is welcoming, surrounded by forest, near a lake and a few hundred metres from the Dniestr. The interior of the monastery church explodes with colour, the iconostasis is beautiful and the frescoes on the ceiling are magnificent and expressive. Near the monastery, don't miss to go and drink at the miraculous spring. It is very popular with the locals for its curative properties (skin and eye diseases). This source of mineral water is said to be very rich in silver, because it is said that a treasure had been hidden, precisely where the water gushed out!