Golia Monastery and Tower

 

 

Golia Monastery is one of the most famous tourist attractions of Iași and is located in Târgul Cucului. It is dedicated to the "Ascension of the Lord". The history of the place of worship is related to Ioan Golia, founder of the original church, Vasile Lupu and his son Ștefăniță Vodă, but also to Ion Creangă, former deacon of the church who lived inside the monastery complex in a house.

 

The medieval aspect that the complex present today is largely due to Vasile Lupu who, as he did at the Royal Court, strengthens the structures around the monastery, the walls reaching to be over 1 meter thick and 9 meters high. The architecture has a combination of Baroque and Byzantine styles. The church has seven towers, each built in different periods, the maximum height of the shrine being 30 meters and the width of 13 meters. The towers have an octagonal base and are differentiated by a Wallachian type decoration and oriental motifs, thus contrasting with the traditional Moldavian interior. The construction is completed by Stefăniță Vodă being mentioned alongside his father inside the temple, in Slavonic, as the founder of the church completed in 1660. The bastions in the corners of the surrounding wall were added by Gheorghe Duca like those from the Cetățuia monastery, the foundation ended at of the year 1672 by him.

 

The Golia Tower, located at the entrance of the monastery, is 30 meters high and has an extraordinary view over the city of Iasi. With a square base of 5 meters on each side, a ground floor, two vaulted floors, a bell room, an upper gallery and terraces, the tower is one of the symbols of Iasi. For a while this tower was the tallest building in the city, the construction being modified at the request of the abbot Melentie. He demanded that the building be raised by 20 meters, thus reaching the impressive height of 50 meters. A few years later, the tower was restored to its original height after some cracks threatened the building with collapse.

 

The City Hall newspaper published at that time an article entitled "Targeting and hunting birds in the middle of the city" in which he accused Ion Creangă of climbing a Goliath Tower and allegedly shooting crows that soiled the roof of the church. Creanga's gesture would have added to several other accusations (going to the theater or cutting his hair) for which he was excluded from the church clergy.

 

Between 1943 - 1947, in Golia, restoration works took place, the monastery being reopened after this date. In 1955, in two rooms on the east side of the enclosure, the “Creangă” Museum was inaugurated, with documentary materials regarding the great writer.

 

The views are from the Eduard Ionescu collection, Cluj Napoca