File:Church of Saint Anthony - Old Court (1) (53463485158).jpg

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The church of St. Anton is located near the Old Court of the Romanian capital, Bucharest. It is dedicated to the Feast of the Annunciation and to Saint Anthony the Great. St. Anthony is patron of children and protects them from diseases, he is also protector of person who have debts, problems with money and poor people.

It is considered to be the oldest building in Bucharest. For sure it is the only one of four churches that initially existed within Curtea Veche, the court of the Princes of Wallachia. Many princes of the 16th through 18th centuries prayed there or were anointed to their office. The date of construction is not entirely clear: the 1715 pisanie placed above the entrance door by Ștefan Cantacuzino, replacing one from the 16th century, mentions Mircea Ciobanul (the Shepherd) as the builder, with his son Pătrașcu the Good responsible for ornamentation and painting. The oldest document mentioning the building is from 1563. The donor portrait depicts Mircea the Shepherd, his wife Doamna Chiajna, their son Mircea and Mircea the Elder, who founded a church there during his much earlier reign. The church and court were burned a number of times by the Ottomans. A bell tower was built in the 1670s under Grigore I Ghica and George Ducas; it burned following a lightning strike in 1691 and was rebuilt by Constantin Brâncoveanu, who added a clock.

Ștefan Cantacuzino replaced the entrance portal with a wider one, still extant; tore down the wall separating nave from narthex, replacing it with three arches on stone columns; painted the interior; and redesigned the facades, coating them in carefully worked white mortar designed to imitate building blocks. A 1758 document indicates that Constantine Mavrocordatos enlarged the building by adding two chapels to the north and south of the narthex, up to the apse windows; these appear on a 1799 plan. There were thus three altars, with access through holes in the wall; the main altar was also enlarged. In 1798, upon orders from Constantine Hangerli, the surrounding land and buildings were sold at auction, with the funds going to the New Court. The old church entered a period of decline, with merchant houses built from the ruins of the court cropping up.

The church is "the oldest religious building maintained in its original aspect in Bucharest". Called also "Old Royal Court", it was the church were the rulers were worshiped before starting their reign in Wallachia. The voivodal palace, as it can be seen, is situated just in front of the entrance of the church.

It is the only place in Romania where every Tuesday people come in pilgrimage from 06:30 to 20:00. The reason of this continuesly pilgrimage has radices in an event that took place in 1847 - the Great Fire. In March 1847 took place a huge fire in the city and destroyed a big part of the city center. Near to the church that was a prison and inside the prison was a little church erected for the prisoners. The fire destroyed the prison and the church, but a miracle made that the only object that didn’t burn was the silver icon of Saint Anthony which was transferred in the actual church. Actually, now the icon seats next to the chuch, in a tiny chapel where pilgrims wait for minutes to pray in front of the icon.

The old Patron of the Church was the Annunciation. In the sixties of the sixteenth century there was a court of chieftains gathered. The church was finished in several decades. It has suffered in 1611 when it was destroyed by fire. Of its recovery has taken care Matei Basarab. Then it was again destroyed by the invading Turks, but was again restored. In 1660 the church was restored by Grigore Ghica and in 1673 it was reconstructed by Gheorghe Duca. The beautiful tower of St. Anton’s Church was erected in the reign of Grigore Ghica. In the nineteenth century, the church was severely damaged by earthquake and fire.

In the early twentieth century a number of restorations of the church took place which brought the church nearer to its initial form; the trichonch plan of the church with: pronaos, nave with side apses, the altar apsis. The church has four arched niches in the walls.

Regarding the painting, the church has frescoes in the neoclassical style, painted in 1852.

The frescoes of the tower are much more recent, they were made in 1935.
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Source Church of Saint Anthony - Old Court (1)
Author M. Cristian-Ioan from Bucuresti, Romania

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Creative Commons CC-Zero This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

This image was originally posted to Flickr by M. Cristian-Ioan at https://flickr.com/photos/198268261@N07/53463485158. It was reviewed on 24 May 2024 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-zero.

24 May 2024

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current04:20, 24 May 2024Thumbnail for version as of 04:20, 24 May 20241,911 × 2,659 (3.61 MB)El Nuevo Doge (talk | contribs)Transferred from Flickr via #flickr2commons

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