Orheiul Vechi

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Coordinates: 47 ° 19 ′  N , 28 ° 58 ′  E

Map: Republic of Moldova
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Orheiul Vechi
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Moldova

Orheiul Vechi ( Romanian , "Old Orhei", literally "the old Orhei") is an archaeological site, a historical settlement area, a cultural and a landscape protection area southeast of the city of Orhei in the center of the Republic of Moldova . The area has been inhabited since the Stone Age and, with the combination of late medieval excavations, an Orthodox cave monastery founded at the end of the 17th century and the special landscape in the Răut river valley, is the most famous attraction in the country. The approximately 6000 hectare area to which the three villages Trebujeni, Butuceni and Morovaia belong, is the only nominated cultural world heritage site of Moldova and has been on the tentative list of UNESCO since 2007 . Orheiul Vechi has been a state-recognized cultural nature reserve since 2009.

location

Plan with sights
Butuceni hill to the west. St. Mary's Church from 1904 on the left. On the right of the bridge over the Răut, the hotel is hidden behind trees (on the map: The Visitors Center ).

Orheiul Vechi is located 20 kilometers by road southeast of Orhei, the capital of the district of the same name ( Orhei Rajon ). Orheiul Vechi is about 50 kilometers north of the state capital Chișinău on the M2 expressway. The M2 continues via Orhei to Soroca . Shortly before Orhei, the R28 secondary road turns east from the M2 and reaches the Orcheiul Vechi area via the villages of Ivancea and Brăneşti. Half of this is in the south of the Orhei district and half in the neighboring Criuleni district to the south .

The area covers an approximate extension of 3.5 kilometers in east-west direction and 1.5 kilometers in north-south direction, a double narrow loop of the Răut, which is in a valley between steep, grass-covered hills and limestone cliffs Flows southeast and finally flows into the nest . Geologically, the average of up to 300 meters reaching limestone hills of Moldova have on the bottom of the front of some 14 million years ago Sarmatian formed (also called "Sarmatian Sea"), which extended from southeastern Europe to southern Russia. Within this geological level, the so-called Moldovan-Bessarabian plate in the area of ​​northern and central Moldau, to which Orheiul Vechi belongs, consists of easily weatherable sediments of the Sarmatian Miocene , while the flat plains of southern Moldau are formed by deposits from the younger Pliocene . Deep valleys are characteristic of Răut, Pruth , Nistru and some smaller tributaries, which all flow to the southeast. On their slopes, between soft clayey and sandy layers and conglomerates , older rocks such as Cretaceous limestone or even older granites emerge in some places . Such richly structured soil surfaces in river valleys, for which Orheiul Vechi is exemplary, stand out clearly from the otherwise predominant, rather monotonous, flat hilly steppe grass areas and fields. In the fields with fertile Chernozem soils, mainly wheat, maize, sunflowers and, on sun-exposed slopes, grapes are grown. The average annual rainfall of 500 millimeters falls mainly in June and July.

The river, which is 15 to 20 meters wide in this area, meanders between two hills running in an east-west direction. The light coming from the west driveway reached first the remains of the late medieval fortress at the highest point long of about two kilometers and up wide to 700 meters Peştere headland and continues down to the carefully groomed walls of Tatars -Badehauses over to the bridge over the Raut . North of the bridge begins the largest of the three villages, Trebujeni, which extends a good two kilometers along the river. The road that branches off to the south at the fortress on the Peştere hill (“caves”) leads down to another river bridge and to the village of Butuceni, which extends south of the Butuceni hill. This forms a three-kilometer-long headland, which at its eastern end is 300 meters wide and 120 meters high above the river valley. As an eastern extension of Butuceni, the small settlement Morovaia follows downstream. The hills that border the area outside are called Potarca, Selitra and Scoc from north to south. The grass slopes and cliffs of the hills often drop steeply over 100 meters towards the river, only the central Peștere headland merges flat into the valley floor. A slightly larger forest island is located in the northwest. The mixed deciduous forest consists of oaks , beeches , ash trees and linden trees .

history

Archaeological finds point to a settlement of the area since the Paleolithic , which to about 500,000 to 100,000 BC. Is dated. The oldest known camp site in the Upper Paleolithic is dated to 30,000 to 20,000 BC. Dated.

There are traces of settlement that are attributed to the Cucuteni-Tripolje culture (second half of the 5th millennium BC), which was widespread between southeast Europe and southern Russia. A nearby main site of this Neolithic culture is Florești . Other finds date from the Bronze Age (3rd to 2nd millennium BC), the transition to the Iron Age (Chişinău-Corlăteni culture, 12th to 10th century BC) and the Iron Age (from the 8th century BC), including the Geten culture (around 400 to 200 BC). The Geto- Dacian people lived from 8./7. Century BC Until 3rd / 2nd Century BC The area and left traces of a fortress in the east of the Butuceni hill. The subsequent Romans were violent and very thorough in their conquests, so that generally little remained of the Dacian hill fortresses.

From the 6th century and from the 10th to the 12th century AD, several early medieval villages existed. There were five necropolises in the 2nd / 1st Century BC Chr., 10./11. Century AD and from the 14th to the 16th were documented, as well as several successive forts and walled settlements during the same period.

The earliest archaeological evidence of Christianization east of the Carpathians comes from the second half of the 3rd century when Goths lived in the area. In the 4th century, the Goths had adopted the Christian faith. The early Christian settlement in Orheiul Vechi is associated with the biographical information on a certain Augias from Edessa , who was banished to Scythia Minor (today the Dobrudscha region ) by the Roman emperor Constantius II (r. 337–361) because of his schismatic teaching should be. From there, Augias and his followers ( acolytes ) are said to have advanced further north and east. He had examined the limestone walls on the Prut and Nistru rivers for caves in order to set up dwellings there. Certain Christian signs on the cave walls in the area of ​​Orheiul Vechi make a settlement by Christians likely at this time.

Bosie Cave Monastery, in use from the 15th to the 18th centuries. Inscription: “This church was built by the slave Bosie, the pârcălab (governor) of Orhei, together with his wife and children, to honor God so that he may forgive his sins. Selevestru, in 1665. "

Christian hermitages in caves in the area of ​​Orheiul Vechi from the 11th century are historically secured. The simple Christian crosses and encolpions (reliquary capsules ) found from the 11th to 13th centuries prove the existence of a Christian community. From 14./15. Century to the beginning of the 19th century was the heyday of the Christian cave dwellers, when up to 400 monks are said to have lived in the rock caves.

The Golden Horde was a medieval Mongolian empire, which in the 1230er years its power range up to Southeastern Europe expanded . In the Battle of Muhi ( Muhi in the east of Hungary) in 1241 the Mongols defeated an army of the Hungarian king , crossed the Danube and advanced to Wiener Neustadt . Since that time, these peoples, called Tatars in some sources, have also been in the area of ​​Moldova, where they possibly built a kind of urban center. During their reign, the medieval city of Orheiul Vechi was founded around 1330, which was called Schehr al-Jadid (or Schehr al-Cedid, "New City") and, including the already existing buildings, filled the entire Prestere hill. Shehr al-Jadid could have been the regional center of the Tatars. There are finds of coins that were minted in the city between 1364 and 1369. In 1369 the Tatars evacuated the region of today's Republic of Moldova. The Black Death , as the great plague epidemic that spread across Europe from 1347 to 1353 was called, contributed to the weakening of the Golden Horde on the Black Sea coast. In the battle on the Kulikowo Pole near the Don River in southern Russia, their army was defeated by the Kievan Rus in 1380 .

The Principality of Moldova , which existed from around 1350 to 1538, defended its eastern border against the Tatars with a series of fortresses along the Nistru and with the Orhei fortress on the Răut. The Moldovan prince Ștefan cel Mare (r. 1457–1504) defeated the Volga Ural Tatars attacking under the command of Akhmat Khan in 1469 or 1470 near the village of Lipnic in the northern Ocnița Rajon , with both sides suffering heavy losses. Nevertheless, there was an attack by the Tatars in 1499, during which a wooden church probably burned down. The city flourished after the expulsion of the Tatars in the 15th century, especially under the rulers Alexandru cel Bun (r. 1400–1432) and Ștefan cel Mare.

At the end of the 15th century, boyars appointed by Ștefan cel Mare ruled from the fortress on the Pestere hill. The historically important role of Radu Gangur and other boyars has been handed down. Orhei was the capital of the administrative district of the same name ( ținut ) and the residence of its administrator ( pârcălab , " burgrave "). The settlement there seems to have been badly destroyed by a large fire around 1510. The fortress was abandoned in the middle of the 16th century. After that, a village settlement remained while the current city of Orhei grew. At the beginning of the 18th century the Orhei Vechi settlement disappeared.

Archaeological excavations took place mainly between 1947 and 1962 and again from 1996 to 1998. The first phase of the excavations from 1947 was under the direction of the Ukrainian Gheorghe Smirnov (1903–1979), who, according to the doctrine common in the Soviet era, emphasized the Slavic similarities of the exposed church architecture and - as the Moldovan historian Vlad Ghimpu criticizes - is less concerned with them specific Moldovan building tradition. The work of the Soviet excavators Gheorghe Smirnov and Pavel Bârnea was continued after independence in 1991 by other archaeologists who gave practical teaching to students in Orheiul Vechi, financially supported by NGOs . The strategically favorable location has attracted settlers who have been able to defend themselves here since prehistoric times. This continuous settlement resulted in the particular archaeological and cultural-historical interest in Orheiul Vechi, which also led to its entry on the UNESCO tentative list .

Archaeological sites and cultural sites

Most of the prehistoric sites, some of which were inhabited for a long time, are on the Peştera headland. They belong to the Late Bronze Age Noua culture (around 1400 to 1100 BC), which was widespread in northern Moldova and the neighboring regions in Romania and Ukraine, to the Early Iron Age Saharna-Coiza culture (around 900 to 800 BC) between Siret and Nistru and to the Chernyakhov culture (Sântana de Mureș-Cerneahov, around 200 to 400 AD).

The oldest archaeological traces on the Butuceni Hill come from the Cucuteni culture (5th to 4th millennium BC). Remnants of the Saharna-Coiza culture were found in the area of ​​today's church on the top of the hill. Between about 500 and 300 BC BC Geten had built a strongly fortified settlement there. With a size of 3000 × 100 meters, it encompassed the entire hill and was one of the largest settlements laid out by Geten. The steep longitudinal flanks of the hill provided natural protection. In addition, the settlement was secured by several successive ditches and walls made of earth, stones and logs. The getic fortress in the upper part of the hill was surrounded in an oval by a wooden fence, which was 215 meters long and 60 meters at its widest point. The fortress was a military, economic and religious center. Here was the oldest known circular sanctuary of the Geten. In the plain south of the fortress there was a smaller Getic settlement on the site of today's village of Butuceni, which dates back to the 5th to 3rd centuries BC. Is dated.

Early medieval villages

Numerous early medieval settlements were excavated in Orhei Rajon, including in the Selişte municipality a few kilometers southwest of the city of Orhei. The excavation sites of Selişte Vatici, where a fortress and a necropolis existed from the 5th to 7th centuries, are located near the village of the same name in this municipality, Selişte La Rascruce with a settlement in the same period over older settlements from the 12th century BC. Chr. And Selişte Sat, a settlement inhabited from the 5th to the 11th centuries over a layer of the Noua culture from the 14th to the 12th century BC. Another village in the Selişte municipality is Lucăşeuca, where a settlement from the 8th to the 14th centuries with a fortified structure from the 10th to the 12th centuries was examined. In the village of Ivancea, a municipality of the same name on the access road leading from the west to Trebujeni, three layers of settlement from the 6th to the 13th century were found in Cotuliazului. Here (300 meters southeast of Ivancea) the finds reach back to the 4th / 3rd centuries. Millennium BC BC back. 1.3 kilometers north of Ivancea, at Fundul Văii, there was a Geto-Dacian settlement of the 4th / 3rd centuries. Century BC An early medieval settlement from the 10th to 12th centuries discovered in 1993.

The early medieval settlement Pădurea Ţiganca from the 6th and 7th centuries, discovered in 1953, is located 1.5 kilometers northeast of the southeastern end of Trebujeni. Hand-formed pot fragments were found on the right bank of a stream flowing into the Răut. The Selitra site, discovered in 1955, is four kilometers north-northwest of Trebujeni. Hand-formed pottery from the 8th and 9th centuries over remnants of the Chernyakhov culture of the 3rd to 4th centuries have been found on both sides of a stream that damms into a lake here. The excavation site Gura Selitrei, examined in 1950 and 1998, is 1.5 kilometers northwest of Trebujeni and halfway to the village of Furceni on the right bank of the Răut. There, below the Geto-Dacian fortress Trebujeni-Potarca (5th to 2nd century BC) pottery from the 10th to 12th centuries, a potter's wheel and a forge area were uncovered.

From the center of Trebujenis 1.5 kilometers to the north there was a Geto-Dacian settlement from the 4th / 3rd centuries at a place called Scoc on the right bank of the Răut, today in a field on the edge of a forest. Century BC Overlying traces of settlement are dated from the 4th to the 11th century. The place was discovered by Gheorghe Smirnov in 1946 and exposed on a small area in the 1950s. Further excavations, which took place from 1982 to 1988 on 9,360 square meters, identified over 300 buildings from the 6th to 10th centuries, along with 41 clay kilns and 17 iron smiths.

Fântâna Joei is the name of a place 2.5 kilometers north of Trebujeni near the road to Susleni, which was excavated by Smirnov in 1947 and by different teams in 1954, 1956 and 1961. Above the layer of a Thracian settlement of the Saharna-Solonceni culture (8th to 7th centuries BC) followed a Geto-Dacian settlement (4th to 3rd century BC), settlements of the Poieneşti-Lucaşeuca culture (2nd to 1st century BC) and the Chernyakhov culture (3rd to 4th century) and a medieval village from the 10th to 12th centuries. Turned pottery, a potter's wheel and yellow-red pottery from the Tatars of the 14th century come from the latter.

Layers of the Bronze Age, the Chișinău-Corlăteni culture (12th to 10th centuries BC), the Geto-Dacian Poieneşti-Lucaşeuca culture (2nd to 1st century BC) were found on the Peştere headland. as well as the medieval cities of Schehr al-Jadid (14th century) and Orhei (15th to 17th century). The early medieval settlement was in the west of the Peştere headland north across from the cave monastery of Butuceni and measured 350 × 250 meters. From the 10th to the 13th centuries, a fortress built from wood and clay above the hill served as protection for the population in times of war. The tools, pottery, jewelry and stone kilns found are dated from the 5th to the 14th centuries.

Fortress of Shehr al-Jadid

Eastern wall of the medieval Moldovan citadel, 14th to mid-16th century, on the Peştere headland.

The medieval Tatar city of Schehr al-Jadid on the highest part of Peştere Hill served as the regional administrative center. Since the headland is surrounded on three sides by the river, only the unprotected west side of the hill was secured by two parallel ramparts that connected the two river loops. The outer wall was around 570 meters long with a 10 to 12 meter wide trench in front. A 2.5 to 3 meter high section of this wall has been preserved in the south. The second wall was similarly long and 6 to 8 meters high. Both were destroyed in an attack by Crimean Tatars in 1510 . The outer enclosing walls of the fortified city form a rectangle that is now cut through by the access road. Excavations took place in the 1950s and 1980s. The surrounding walls have been partially restored and have been preserved to a constant height.

The stone walls of the citadel, built in the 1360s, surrounded a trapezoidal area of ​​maximum 127 × 92 meters and were reinforced by four circular corner towers. After the withdrawal of the Golden Horde in 1369, a governor of the Moldovan prince took over the restoration and expansion of the complex.

Under Ștefan cel Mare, the fortress ( cetatea ) became the official residence of a Moldovan boyar in the second half of the 15th century . In 1470 a burgrave ( pârcălab ) of Orhei is mentioned for the first time in the sources . Of the palace, which was located near the northern enclosure wall, nothing can be seen today, apart from a square wall at the northeast corner. After the excavations, the area was covered with earth. At the beginning of the 14th century there was a Muslim mausoleum with a crypt on this site . In 1366 the building was converted into the governor's palace before it was expanded to become the official residence of the burgrave. The palace consisted of an underground room made from reused blocks of stone taken from an older building from the time of the Golden Horde. A brick storey with 26 rooms was built above it.

In the west of the citadel courtyard, a stone building was uncovered that was in use from the beginning of the 15th to around the beginning of the 16th century. The basement, which was buried up to 3.2 meters deep in the limestone cliff, was preserved up to a wall height of 2 meters from the once two-story building. Eight fireplaces and a brick kiln were recognized on the floor of the 10.6 × 6.4 meter area. According to preserved wood remains, the floor of the upper floor and the roof were supported by 16 wooden columns.

Tatar bath

Tatar bathhouse from the east

Orheiul Vechi's most distinctive archaeological site is the Tatar bathhouse (locally called feredeu ) on the road near the tip of the Peştere headland. The 37 × 21 meter stone building was first excavated by Gheorghe Smirnov in 1947. It had a working principle adopted from Roman baths and possibly separate areas for men and women. The entrance in the west led initially to the changing room, which also functioned as a relaxation room. This was followed by two separate washing areas and two cross-shaped heated rooms with four connected chambers for sweating cures, which apparently served as massage rooms and are therefore referred to as " hammam ". The air heat was generated by a hypocaust in the ground.

In addition to this bath there were two other smaller baths in the south of the headland on the river bank, of which hardly anything can be seen.

Mosque, caravanserai and church

In the middle between the fortress, the Tatar bath and the southern bank of the Peştere headland, the remains of the walls of three buildings, which have been restored up to 1.5 meters high, are located on the meadows sloping slightly to the south and surrounded by fields. The mosque formed a rectangle of 58 × 52 meters and was oriented with the longitudinal axis to the south. Access was through a portal on the north side and a minaret stood on the north-east corner .

The mosque is dated to the 14th century, the time of the Golden Horde, as is the caravanserai a few meters to the east , which formed a rectangle measuring 56 × 27 meters. An elaborately designed entrance portal each led from the north and south into the inner courtyard.

The small single-nave church south of the caravanserai measured 16.5 × 6.5 meters. A horseshoe-shaped apse protruded far beyond the east wall. A man and a woman in gold-trimmed clothes were buried in two graves under the nave. They were believed to be the founders of the church, which was in use from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Because of its archaic shape, it is likely to be one of the oldest churches in the entire region east of the Carpathian Mountains. A Christian cemetery was discovered in the area; some gravestones bear Cyrillic inscriptions.

Cave monastery and Butuceni headland

Cave monastery. Main room, behind the chapel

According to a centuries-old tradition, the Butuceni Hill is still a sacred place today. The cave monastery ( Mănăstirea Peştera ) on Butuceni Hill, probably founded around 1675, attracts most of the visitors to the Orheiul Vechi area. The cave complex, which is located about 50 meters above the river in the rock face, includes a chapel and several adjoining monk's caves. Access is from above through a tunnel that was dug in 1820 when the cave monastery took over the function of a parish church. Before, there were very steep paths that led up from the river bank and have now disappeared due to erosion. From a distance, access can be localized through a small bell tower that was built next to it in 1890. The cave church of Maria consecrated; the underground sacral area is divided into a main room and a chapel on the east side. The ceiling of the main room is almost flat, that of the chapel is elliptically vaulted. A passage leads to a balcony in the rock wall, from which there is a view over the river.

Opposite the chapel, a few steps lead down to a large cave with a low flat ceiling. Partition walls on both long sides separated the eleven monk cells open to the room from one another. The cells served the monks as accommodation until 1816. There were more monk cells in several places in the rest of the limestone rocks on the river bank. The Bosie Cave Monastery is located east of St. Mary's Church.

A few meters above the bell tower is a stone cross from the 18th century, which popular belief believes has a healing and wish-fulfilling effect. Further to the east, a church of St. Mary ( Biserica Sfanta Maria ) in Neo-Russian style was built in 1904 at the highest point of the hill in the area of ​​the vanished Geto-Dacian fortress . The bell tower is square on the lower floor and octagonal above. Its tent roof is crowned by an onion dome. The carefully renovated church is surrounded by well-tended gardens, outbuildings and a monastery wall.

Trebujeni municipality

Trebujeni is the name of both the municipality consisting of the three villages and the main town shown on maps. In the 2004 census there were 1912 inhabitants in all three villages, 1449 of them in Trebujeni, 239 in Butuceni and 224 in Morovaia. Of these, 1877 identified themselves as Moldovans , 10 as Romanians , 10 as Ukrainians , 8 as Russians and 2 as Gagauz . Around 2012 the population was around 2100. The villages mainly consist of homesteads in house gardens along a main road. With the exception of a few buildings from the 19th century, most of the houses date from the period after the Second World War to the turn of the millennium.

The majority of the population lives from agriculture. Around 2010, statistically 84.8 percent of the workforce in the Orheiul Vechi area worked in agriculture, 10 percent in education, 1.9 percent in trade and services and 1.7 percent in public administration. Even if Orheiul Vechi is the most famous art-historical and folkloric attraction in the country, the tourist infrastructure is still in its infancy. According to comparative data from 2005, Moldova brings up the rear in terms of foreign tourism among the transition countries of the former Soviet Union (measured by the number of overnight stays in hotels). Trebujeni and Buticeni together have about ten overnight accommodations, most of them are family pensions in the village of Trebujeni, where some rooms in a private house or a homestead have been set up as guest rooms. There is also a hotel at the entrance to Butuceni and an Agro Pensiunea (farm guesthouse) with a high standard in the center of Butuceni.

Of the municipality's nine grocery stores, most are in Trebujeni; Butuceni has three smaller shops with a limited range of goods. School education is possible in Trebujeni up to secondary level. There is a culture house in each of the three villages. Apart from accommodation, Trebujeni has no tourist offers. The minibuses ( marshrutka ), which run several times a day to Chișinău and Orhei, go to the main square near the church in the center of Trebujeni and the square by the bridge at the entrance to Butuceni.

Butuceni. House in the village museum

Some houses along the main street in Butuceni have been converted into a museum village. Finds from the area since antiquity are presented in a house museum (pottery, weapons and folk tradition). This is the only such touristic preparation of a village in Moldova, it should show the traditional rural way of life.

A traditional homestead (Romanian gospodărie țărănească ) consists of a walled or fenced courtyard, which is entered through a representative covered gate. The door to the main house with the living room ( casa mare ) is in the middle of the long side, on which a veranda is in front. The hipped roof, which used to be covered with shingles , also covers the veranda and is supported there by a series of wooden supports. In addition, there are agricultural outbuildings and possibly smaller houses with simple chambers, including a summer house in Butuceni, which is partly built into the ground because of the heat in summer. Until the 18th century the houses in the country were made of wood or clay, from the 19th century they were increasingly made of field stones. A separate underground cellar, which is closed by a wooden door, is indispensable for keeping supplies. An outdoor kitchen stove ( loznița ) and a grain mill also belong to a homestead.

literature

  • Klaus Bochmann, Vasile Dumbrava, Dietmar Müller, Victoria Reinhardt (eds.): The Republic of Moldau. Republica Moldova. A manual. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2012, ISBN 978-3-86583-557-4
  • Andrei Brezianu: Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Moldova . (European History Dictionaries, No. 37) The Scarecrow Press, Lanham (Maryland) / London 2007 (keywords Butuceni Monastery , p. 65; Orheiul Vechi , p. 269)
  • Jonathan Eagles: Stephen the Great and Balkan Nationalism: Moldova and Eastern European History. IB Tauris, London 2013, ISBN 978-1780763538
  • Reinhardt Hootz (ed.): Art monuments in the Soviet Union. A picture guide. Ukraine and Moldova. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1984, pp. 458f
  • Frieder Monzer, Timo Ulrichs: Moldova. With Chișinău, all of Bessarabia and Transdnestria . Trescher, Berlin 2013, pp. 134-139

Web links

Commons : Orheiul Vechi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Orheiul Vechi Archaeological Landscape. UNESCO Tentative Lists
  2. Lt. Government resolution of March 23, 2009, cf. Sergiu Musteăța: Cultural Heritage Preservation in the Republic of Moldova Between Legal Framework and Reality. In: Civilization Researches. (Ed .: UNESCO Chair in Intercultural Dialogue) Tbilisi University Press, Tiflis 2010, pp. 161–178, here p. 167
  3. ^ Wilfried Heller, Mihaela Narcisa Arambașa: Geography. In: Klaus Bochmann u. a. (Ed.): The Republic of Moldova , p. 161
  4. Sergiu Musteata: Culture and Heritage . In: Klaus Bochmann u. a. (Ed.): The Republic of Moldau , p. 647
  5. Ioanna A. Oltean: Dacia. Landscape, colonization and romanization . Routledge, New York 2007, pp. 7, 222
  6. Ion Tentiuc, Alexandru Popa: Some Considerations Regarding rock-cut monasteries and spreading of the Christianity in Eastern Moldova During the Late Roman Period and Early Middle Age . In: Aurel Zanoci, Tudor Arnăut, Mihail Băţ (eds.): Studia Archeologiae et Historiae Antiquae . Chișinău 2009, pp. 349–364, here pp. 351, 355
  7. Ion Tentiuc, Alexandru Popa: Some Considerations Regarding rock-cut monasteries and spreading of the Christianity . In: Aurel Zanoci, Tudor Arnăut, Mihail Băţ (eds.): Studia Archeologiae et Historiae Antiquae . Universitatea de Stat din Moldova, Chișinău 2009, pp. 349–363, here p. 359
  8. ^ Frieder Monzer, Timo Ulrichs: Moldova , 2013, p. 138
  9. Soroca. In: Andrei Brezianu: Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Moldova , 2007, p. 331
  10. Jonathan Eagles: Stephen the Great and Balkan Nationalism, 2013, 159
  11. Gheorghe Postica: Orhei fortress in the strategy of Stephen III of Moldavia. Tyragetia, series nouă, vol. I [XVI , no. 2, Istorie. Muzeologie Chişinău, 2007. ] The National Museum of History of Moldova
  12. Jonathan Eagles: Stephen the Great and Balkan Nationalism , 2013, p. 158
  13. Orheiul Vechi. The index of the early medieval archaeological monuments. Romanian History and Culture
  14. Cetăţi . Binecredinciosul domn Ştefan cel Mare (Romanian)
  15. Orheiul Vechi Tourist Guide. UNDP Moldova, 2004
  16. Demographic, national, language and cultural characteristics. (Excel table in Section 7) National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldoca
  17. ^ Peter Jordan: Tourism . In: Klaus Bochmann u. a. (Ed.): Die Republik Moldau , 2012, p. 483
  18. Angela Botezatu: Pensions Management in the Rural Areas. In: Scientific Papers Series Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and Rural Development . Vol. 15, No. 1, 2015, pp. 51–58, here p. 53
  19. ^ Preliminary Technical File. Orheiul Vechi, Moldova, p. 10
  20. ^ Thede Kahl: Architecture and architectural monuments . In: Klaus Bochmann u. a. (Ed.): Die Republik Moldau, 2012, pp. 669f