This church is often grouped with the painted monasteries by virtue of its external frescoes, but it is in fact merely a village church. At the time of our visit, the church itself was locked so limited opportunity to review the building properly. Its exterior is considerably more worn, and weather affected than other similar monasteries in the region, so it is one perhaps to miss unless you have plenty of time.

Built by the order of Luca Arbore in 1503 - Luca was one of the most prominent boyars of King Stephen - and he had founded the building of the church in the village that bear his name - Arbore. The outside paintings were done around 1540-42 (as the custodian on the premises explained us) - but not much can be seen today from the once magnificent scenes. The base color was green - when Voronet is about the famous blue and the church at Gura Humorului is about dark red - but again, not much of the green can be seen on the outside walls. The Moldavian church painters knew the secrets of the colors that were created from the plants but that secret they took to their graves ... so nowadays is almost impossible to reproduce that shade - even with the XXI-st century technology available. Entrance fee is 5 Ron - roughly 1 euro and the fee for tacking photos is 10 Ron - 2 euros - so it is not expensive at all . And this is the only UNESCO list church where we were allowed to take pictures inside the church! So when you are in Bucovina include Arbore church on your list - it is interesting it is not crowded - we were the only visitors in the time frame we were there - and it is worth the trip.... go and see it while you still can.