Today I will take you on a new trip, we can go cycling if you like that or if you like we could also take a long, long walk. I will take not so far from Bucharest, we will go 12 km.
I will take you to a beautiful place, I have to admit I’m not a religious person, but even so, we will see a monastery and admire the view near it

The monastery is called Cernica. This monastery has a long history. It was built in 1608 in the time of Radu Șerban by Cernica Știrbei and his wife, Chiajna.
Before 1608, this land used to be called Gradiștea Floreștilor.
Not long after the monastery was made, there was an epidemic of plague, so the monastery was abandoned for some time. There is a legend about how the monastery became again what it used to be before the plague.
The archimandrite Gheorghe is the priest who helped the monastery become what it used to be. The legend says that the priest from the Athos Mountain one night had a dream of Saint Nicholas, who was telling him that there is a place that needs to be clean from all the wild beasts. But the priest didn’t know where that place was. So he had been searching for it for a long time.
He finally found it in a church on a picture of Saint Nicholas, with a giant snake around it. The priest told the snake to leave the place, and the snake did it.
Talking about legends, there is another one about a fountain near the entry of the monastery. Unfortunately, I don t have a picture of the fountain. Anyway, I will tell you the legend.
There used to be a Pasha who had a camp in the Pantelimon village very near to the monastery. This Pasha wanted to rob the monastery. While he was drinking his coffee and planning the attack, one of his men attacked him with a gun, trying to kill him.
Fortunately for the Pasha, the bullet hit a bag full of gold coins. Because he didn’t die, he decided to not attack the church anymore and send those gold coins to the church so they could make a fountain.
About the water from the fountain, it is said that it never blends with the water from the lake even if they are significantly closer.
Now getting back to facts, the monastery complex has 3 churches and 3 vergers. The monastery was first attested by a royal charter in the time of Radu Vodă Șerban in 1608.
In 1778 the painter Nicolae Polcovnicu founded a big painting school of church painting in the monastery.
In the monastery, also there used to be a school of the copyist. Form the school remained many manuscripts discovered later by Nicolae Iorga. These manuscripts are now exposed in the monastery museum. There are more than 15000 old books a lot of ancient manuscripts.
Among them is the Holy Gospel from 1637, the Homily of Varlam from Iasi from 1643 wrote with Cyrillic letters.The Bible of Șerban Cantacuzino from 1688.
At the monastery, used to function a monastic seminary.
After the Second World War, the monastic seminary and typography were closed until 1995.

The monastery is lovely to visit, and the same is the lake nearby. The cemetery also looks nice. So I hope you enjoy it!