This was probably the most impressive of the monasteries that we visited.  Stepen the Great is buried here, so it is sort of a Mecca for Romanians.  It is at the northern point of Romania, close to the Ukraine border (second time we have been right by Ukraine but didn’t go in, oh well).  The entire church is fortified, next to a mountain with a large cross and Stepen written with bushes (hard to see in the photo, but look close).  The inside of the church was the most spectacular we have seen and as far as I could tell they allowed you to take pictures.  A bit of history:  “Putna Monastery, raised between 1466-1469, the first fortified construction of Stephan the Great, was designed to be the necropolis of the ruler’s family and his descendents, including Petru Rares. The story goes that it was built in a general area picked out by Stephen’s advisor, Daniel the Hermit. The exact position of the church was left up to God when Stephen went to the top of a hill and fired an arrow— wherever it fell the church would be built.”