The princely residence of the 14th
century was among the first art centers in Moldavia.
The Church of St. Nicholas of the former diocese of
Radauti is one of the oldest architectural monuments
in medieval Moldavia, and it is likely to have been
founded by Bogdan I soon after 1359 on the site of
an old wooden church. Built under the influence of
Roman-Gothic architecture, it has the form of a basilica,
with three naves, in cut rock slabs. The walls are
1.40 m thick, and the church is 33 m long, 12.50 m
wide and 12.13 m high. Its characteristic feature
is the vaulting system with semi-cylinders placed
transversally against the longitudinal axis. It also
has false rostrums, similar to vaults, which can be
reached by a spiral stairway situated in the narthex.
In the narthex all the vaults are of the same height,
while in the nave the lateral vaults are lower, narrower,
and with slightly pointed semi-cylindrical vaults,
perpendicular to the vault of the central nave. A
wall pierced by a doorway separates the narthex from
the nave. The altar apse is connected to the nave
by a rectangular space, similar to the choir of the
Roman basilicas. The general distribution of the plan
and elevation is on the whole characteristic of the
Roman basilicas with a choir and an apse. The church
has eleven small windows, narrow to the interior and
wide to the exterior. There are buttresses on the
facades. The upper part of the facades is decorated
with a frieze of niches. The four perimetrical buttresses
on the apse and the five ones of the northern and
southern sides respectively betray their purely ornamental
use, as it is a well-known fact that in Gothic architecture,
the buttresses and the flying buttresses were used
to bear, from the outside, the load of the pointed
arches of the vaults pushing from the inside. These
are actually groined vaults with framed thrusting
ribs. The Church of St. Nicholas played a remarkable
part in the development of Moldavian architecture,
as it became the prototype for several monuments of
the 16th and 17th centuries. In the church are the
graves of the first princes of Moldavia - Bogdan I,
Latcu Voda, Roman I, Stefan I. This accounts for the
special care that Stephen the Great had for this church,
as he had beautiful tombstones placed over the graves
of his ancestors, some of which were made by master
Jan between 1479 and 1480. The tombstones in the Church
of St. Nicholas in Radauti were undoubtedly made on
Stephen the Great's order. The existence of the graves
of the princes until Alexander the Good is a testimony
of the continuity of the Moldavian dynasty from Bogdan
I to Alexander the Good. In 1559, Alexandru Lapusneanu
added a porch to the church, having the same width
and height as the narthex. The porch has a long rectangular
form, with two entrances, one to the north and the
other to the south. The porch has a spherical calotte,
supported by a double system of groined vaults. The
framework of the porch doorways is Gothic in style.
Present-day research asserts that the
paintings at Bogdana - Radauti are closely connected
to the reign of Stephen the Great, followed by other
works during the reign of Alexandru Lapusneanu. Stephen
the Great's portrait can be easily recognized in the
votive picture. His being part of the votive picture
is due to the fact that the restoration work was undertaken
on his orders and at his expense. In the votive picture
the church can be seen as having a row of niches under
the projecting roof. The niches were later uncovered
during the restoration work in the 1980s. The design
of such decorative work, characteristic of Byzantine
and Balcanic architecture, may have been borrowed
by the master architects of the Church of St. Nicholas
in Radauti from a brick monument which was still in
existence in Moldavia at that time.
