Church of the Mother of God (Măzărache Church,1752)

The oldest building (including ecclesiastical) that has survived to date on the territory of present-day Chisinau, and the only one that preserves medieval Moldovan architecture. The Măzărache Church is documented in 1752 (year of consecration). It is popularly named after its founder – the nobleman, merchant of Chisinau Vasile Măzărache.
The oldest necropolis of the capital, dating back to the 15th-16th centuries, it’s located around the church, and on the same hill flowed the famous springs, from which the city of Chisinau takes its name.
In 1955, in an almost fantastic gesture, the Soviet authorities gave the church to the Russians of the Old Rite (Lipovins) in exchange for their cathedral, which had been demolished during the construction of the Boulevard of the Youths (today Grigore Vieru Boulevard).
Since then, access to the church has been limited; guests of the capital may visit only the churchyard and the surrounding buildings, including some tombstones with inscriptions in Slavonic and Old Romanian.

The Armenian Apostolical Church, The Holy Mother of God (1803–1804)

After the annexation of Bessarabia to the Russian Empire in 1812, the Armenian Archbishop (1809-1828) of Moldo-Vlachia, Grigor Zakarian, had to move to Chișinău, his title being limited to that of Archbishop of the Armenians of Bessarabia, although the Armenians across the Prut continued to subordinate themselves to him. The 400 parishes and five churches (Akkerman, Ismail, Tighina, Chisinau, Hotin) of the Armenian community in the region came under the jurisdiction of the Armenian community in Bessarabia.
The Armenian Apostolic Church “Holy Mother of God” in Chisinau dates back to 1803 and was built on the foundation of an old damaged Moldovan church. Built in 1645, during the reign of Vasile Lupu (1634-1653), it was dedicated to “St. Nicholas” and was also known as the “Domnească Church”. Frequent invasions by the Tatars, several earthquakes and destruction caused by the Russo-Turkish wars destroyed it to such an extent that by 1741 it was in total ruin.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the land, and what remained of the church once founded by Vasile Lupu, was bought by an Armenian from the local authorities. This one was Baron Oganes, who contributed to the creation of the church in memory of his parents in 1803.
During the Soviet period, according to the Armenian community, the church was used as a warehouse. From archival documents, we know that its conversion into a storage facility took place in the summer of 1944.
Despite the fact that the building had its religious activity suspended, it continued to gather all the Armenians of the Moldovan SSR, becoming a symbol of the preservation of their spiritual unity and identity – “the Armenian community always gathered around the church, even when it was closed”.
The Armenian community took possession of the Armenian Church again in 1992. The church resumed its activities on 19 June 1993, when it was inaugurated by the head of the Moscow and Nahicevan Eparchy in the presence of high dignitaries, and was served by a priest assigned by the Armenian Patriarchate of Etchimiadzin.

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Who was Manuc Bey?
Armenian, Emanuel Mârzaian was born in 1769 in Rusciuc to a wealthy merchant family. After the death of his parents and his marriage to a wealthy Armenian woman, he took over the family business and established trade links with Constantinople. Thanks to his talent for cultivating relationships, bribing and sensing opportunities, he soon became the richest man in the Balkans. One of the first people he corrupted was the governor of Rusciucco, who offered him a large sum of money in exchange for guaranteeing his import and export business.

He also turned his business to the Romanian Country and got in the good graces of the ruler Constantine Ipsilanti from whom he obtained the dignities of serdar and paharnic. With a remarkable political intuition he sensed the approach of the Russo-Turkish war and in 1806, through high intermediaries such as the ruler of Muntenia and the Russian consul in Iasi, he requested and obtained Russian citizenship.

During the Russo-Turkish war of 1806-1812, Manuc turned his main business to Wallachia where he began to build the inn that bears his name in Bucharest. He also bought large estates in Wallachia.

Enjoying the trust of the Ottomans, Manuc was commissioned by Pasha to supply the army, maintain the Danubian fortresses and negotiate with the Russians.

He also gained the trust of the Montagnards (Muntenians) by offering the Romanian Country a loan of 160,000 talers without interest and by paying (non-refundable) a debt to the Turks of 60,000. In the meantime the Turks also granted him the title of bei or prince of Moldavia.

Manuc bei, a trusted Turkish agent of the Russian Empire, took part in and hosted in his inn the negotiations at the end of the Russo-Turkish war in 1812, negotiations which for us resulted in the loss of Bessarabia. For this Tsar Alexander I decorated him with the medal of Knight of the Order of Saint Vladimir.

After a short journey to Sibiu, the prudent Manuc Bei moved to Chișinău, where in 1816 he bought a 10-hectare estate in Hâncești for 300,000 lei-gold. He did not get to see the finished palace because he died in suspicious circumstances on June 20, 1817 at only 48 years old in a hunting accident, in which Russian generals were taking part, or, according to other anonymous sources, he was killed by the Ottomans for high treason.

He was buried in the courtyard of the Armenian Church in Chisinau.

The Roman-Catholic Cathedral of Divine Providence (1840)

The Roman Catholic community in Chisinau, composed almost exclusively of Polish people, was formed in the late 1830s. Ten years later, with their own financial contributions, the community builts a holy place, in 1840.
The church project was approved in St Petersburg. The architect and sculptor Joseph I. Charlemand played an important role for the design.
The architecture of this cathedral was designed in the spirit of late neoclassicism, influenced by Italian Renaissance architecture.
On 30 September 1964, the church was handed over to the School No 56 and converted into an assembly hall. Later, the church also housed a recording studio and a warehouse of the film studio “Moldova Film”. In 1988, the church was converted into a poetic theatre.
Only at the end of 1989, after numerous appeals to the central authorities of the USSR, the Red Cross and the ONU, was the church returned to the parish and the faithful.
Nowadays, there is an estimated number of 20,000 Catholics in Moldova.

Saint Theodora of Sihla Church (1895)

The chapel of the Bessarabian Zemstva’s high school for girls was built in 1895, with Teodor Krupensky and his daughter Euphrosinia, who was married to Prince Viazemski of Russia, as its founders. The architect of the Byzantine-style project was Alexander Bernardazzi.
The consecration of the chapel did not take place for another 27 years due to a tragic event in its altar, that made it impossible to continue using it, the gymnasium having at the time another chapel built in its courtyard. It was consecrated only in 1922, and was given the name “St. Theodore Tiron” of the “Regina Maria” High School for Girls. During the USSR regime, the Chisinau Museum of Atheism was opened here.
Only after the independence of the Republic of Moldova, the church was returned to the parishioners and received a new name – Saint Theodora of Sihla. The stone under the bas-relief of A. Bernardazzi, which is located on an outer wall of the church, was brought from the cave in the area of Neamț (Romania), where St. Theodora lived in the sixtystery.

Church of St. Great Martyr Panteleimon (1891)

The church was founded by two brothers of Greek origin, Ivan and Victor Sinadino, honorary citizens of Chișinău. They were the sons of Pantelimon Sinadino, a former mayor of the city who served two terms, from 1837-1839 and 1840-1842. Construction of the church, designed in the neo-Byzantine style by architect Alexander Bernardazzi, took five years to complete. The church was built with a basement and vault intended to hold the remains of up to 26 individuals. Through this ecclesiastical gesture, the Sinadino family ensured their burial place within the church. The last member of the Sinadino family to oversee the church was Pantelimon Victor Sinadino, grandson of another mayor from the same family, also named Pantelimon Sinadino, who served from 1905-1910.

The family tomb, which contained the remains of Sinadino family members, was destroyed by the Soviet authorities, and the remains were reported as missing. For many years, the church was repurposed for various functions, including as a warehouse for building materials, a film storage facility, and later as an exhibition space and room for tasting alcoholic beverages.

After a long period of disuse, the church was reopened in 1992 thanks to the efforts of Father Valeriu Bazatin. On November 8, after necessary preparations, he celebrated the first mass in the church after its reopening.

Cathedral of Christ’s Nativity, Bell Tower,Triumphal Arch

The cathedral was built between 1830-1836. The idea of building such an important object of worship belonged to Metropolitan Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni. But the foundation stone was laid only 9 years after his death.
The architect Avraam Melnikov, chosen by competition, used the late neoclassical style (empiric style) for the building, with the use of ancient Greek forms for the columns.
It has a symmetrical composition,  representing a square with a side of 27 m, by joining to the cubic body four porticoes with six Doric columns each, resulting in a cruciform plan with identically designed facades. It was built of stone and brick, with three altars – one main altar – the Nativity of the Lord, and two side altars – the one on the left, dedicated to St. John the New, and the one on the right – St. Nicholas the Martyr (current names).
The first radio station in Chisinau, Radio Basarabia, was officially inaugurated by broadcasting the liturgy from the Metropolitan Cathedral on 8 October 1939.
The cathedral suffered during the 1940 earthquake, then during the World War II, with the spire, dome and interior being rebuilt in 1956, but with deviations from the original forms. During the USSR it was used as an exhibition hall.
The reopening in a new format took place on August 25th, 1996 with the consecration of the Cathedral Cross.

The original bell tower was built at the same time as the cathedral. It was located 40 m away from it, symmetrically with the cathedral and in relation to the geometric centre of the cathedral section. It had four levels, three prismatic, with successively receding sides, and the fourth in the form of a flat circular belfry for the bell chamber, covered by a dome. On the first level was a chapel, the entrance to which was through a portico with two columns on the south side. Identical porticoes adorned each facade of the bell tower, creating a small-scale repetition of the composition of the cathedral and harmonising with it in the shape of the domes.
It was demolished in the 1960s and rebuilt in 1998 according to the old images.

The history of the construction of the “Holy Gates” is curious – after the original project (which involved the erection of the Cathedral and the Bell Tower), they were not planned.  At the time, when the bell tower was already erected, it was discovered that the largest of the bells could not fit through the windows to be mounted. The giant bell, cast from Turkish cannons, weighed about 400 poods (about 6.5 t).
In order to accommodate the big bell, a decision was taken to build the Triumphal Arch, located at the entrance to the square from the direction of the Mitropolis (it has not been preserved to this day – it was destroyed during the World War II).
The official version was that the Arch was erected to commemorate the victory of the Russian armies over the Turks, of course.
The first arched clocks appeared in 1842. They were brought from Odessa, but in 1849, a strong hurricane tore off the dial, but its mechanism continued to work until 1881. The new mechanism was purchased from Austria. The actual clock worked without repair until it was bombed in 1941.
In 1945, plaques with the names of Soviet army fighters and citizens, who fought on the territory of Bessarabia in World War II and received the distinction of “Hero of the Soviet Union”, were nailed on the walls. The plaques were removed in 1991, after Moldova gained its independence.
Since its erection, the Triumphal Arch bore several names – it was also called the Holy Gates, and under the Soviet regime it was called the Arch of Victory.

Ruins of the Church Museum/Old Cathedral

The Village Museum

Located at the entrance of Chisinau, near the City Gates, the Village Museum can be considered an oasis of revelation and tranquility. It is the perfect place for meditation, where visitors are enchanted by the enchanting landscape that exudes a fairy-tale atmosphere.

Established in 1991 as a branch of the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History, the Village Museum was officially inaugurated as such in May 1995, showcasing the ambiance of a Basarabian village from the 17th to 19th centuries. The museum is home to a collection of folk architecture monuments.

The inaugural addition to the museum in 1995 was the windmill from the village of Opaci, in the Causeni district. Unfortunately, this windmill was destroyed in a fire in 2001 and has yet to be restored. Currently, the museum complex is home to the oldest ecclesiastical monument in the Republic of Moldova – a wooden church brought from the village of Hirișeni for restoration and preservation. Erected in 1642, this church stands as one of the tallest wooden churches in the country, reaching a height of 27 meters.

Church of Saints Constantine and Helen (1777)

In the past, it was the church of the cemetery of the village of Visterniceni, later annexed to the city and became the Riscani district of the capital.
The church bears its present name since 1834, after the request of the nobleman Iorgu Râșcanu to change the name of the church from Resurrection of the Lord to the present name of Saints Emperors Constantine and his mother Elena, a change made in memory of the founder and his father – Constantin Râșcanu, a merchant and nobleman from the city of  Iași.
Constantin Râscanu’s mother (supposedly named Elena) was a half-sister of Vasile Măzărache, the founder of the church of the same name.
The church owns an important library of church books, written in Greek, Romanian and Slavonic, the most important being: Greek Anthologhin (1686), Greek Penticostaion (1687), Bible (1755), Greek Triod (1777) printed in Venice; Romanian Triodian (1731), Romanian Apostle (1794), Gospel (1794) printed in Râmnic, Romania. There are also books printed in Chisinau: Liturgy (1815), Molebnic (1817), Psalter ( 1857), Anthologhion (1861), Octioh, Triodion (1862), Trebnic (Molitvenic, 1908).
In the altar of the church there is also an The  aër covering, measuring 88/7.8 cm. The canvas is sewn with silk thread in several colours and with gold and silver threads. There’s an inscription on this canvas in Greek, which translates “Praise God your servants Constantine, Catherine and Evpraxia the nun, 1765”, meaning that this the aër covering was given to the church by its founder, and the date proves, that the church was functioning even before the year of 1777.
In the cemetery next to the church we can still find tombstones, on which we can still decipher the names of great families of Moldovan nobles and dignitaries: Rascanu, Donici, Krupenscki, Russo…

Monastery ,,Saint Great Martyr Teodor Tiron” (Ciuflea) (1854-1858)

It is the only convent of nuns in the territory of Chișinău. Its cathedral is a white stone temple with nine gilded domes and was built at the request of brothers Teodor (1796-1854) and Anastasie (1801-1870) Ciufli, based on the design of architect Luca Zaușchevici. It is popularly known as “Ciuflea Monastery.” The construction of the cathedral began in 1854 and was completed in 1858. The founders of this holy place, brothers Teodor and Anastasie, are buried near the south wall, as evidenced by the inscription on the marble slab inside the cathedral of the monastery. A tragic event, related to the First Jewish Pogrom in Chișinău, is also associated with this holy place. The pogrom began on Easter Day, 6 April 1903, in front of Ciuflea Cathedral, where Jewish shops and stores were located. The pogrom lasted three days: 6, 7, and 8 April 1903. These days coincided with Orthodox Christian Easter. According to the Jewish calendar, the first day corresponded to the last day of Pesach (Passover), called “Acharon shel Pesach.” The pogrom in Chișinău attracted attention from the Jewish world, Russia, and the entire civilized world due to a new element: people being killed. Previously, in the pogroms of 1881-1882 in southern Russia, the defining element had been robbery. This time, however, there was murder — a type of murder that had not occurred in pogroms for about 250 years. During the Chișinău pogrom, 51 people were killed, including 49 Jews (24 women and children), over 300 were wounded (75 of them seriously), and about 800 Jewish homes and shops were destroyed, damaged, or looted. The former cathedral, now the Monastery of Saint Great Martyr Teodor Tiron, remained a beacon of the ancestral Orthodox faith throughout the difficult years of Soviet atheism (1962-2002). On 2 May 2008, the Icon of Our Lady ” Panagia Portaitissa ” was brought to Ciuflea Monastery from Mount Athos. The icon is currently kept in the Winter Church of the monastery. A small part of the Holy Relics of the Great Martyr Teodor Tiron is also kept here.