Qualla: Coltea Church https://qualla.com/coltea-church en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:31 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/coltea-church-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Coltea Church https://qualla.com/coltea-church Coltea Church: Introduction https://qualla.com/coltea-church/ Photo credit Stefan Jurca from Munich, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0. In Bucharest in the 1690s, a wealthy nobleman named Mihai Cantacuzino made an unusual decision. He commissioned a stone church and built a hospital next to it. Hospitals were not common in Wallachia at the time. Most of the sick were treated at home if they were lucky and at a monastery if they were not. Cantacuzino's foundation worked the other way around. The monastery existed to support the hospital, and the hospital existed to take care of anyone who walked through the gate, paying or not. The church he raised between 1695 and 1698 still stands at 1 I. C. Bratianu Boulevard, just off University Square, with a statue of its founder out front. Most of the rest of the complex is gone, but the church remains: small, lavishly decorated, the oldest surviving Brancovenesc-style church in Bucharest.

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Image: Stefan Jurca from Munich, Germany | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/coltea-church-wp/sxfs-coltea-church-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Coltea Church: Before the Stone https://qualla.com/coltea-church/ Photo credit Goldmund100, CC BY-SA 3.0. A wooden church and a few monastic cells stood here first, built around 1641 or 1642 by a minor noble named Sluger Udrea and dedicated to Paraskeva of the Balkans. He left the property to his brother, a high-ranking court officer named Coltea Doicescu. By 1669, Coltea's name had ...

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Image: Goldmund100 | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/coltea-church-wp/sxfs-coltea-church-before-the-stone.mp3 0:06 2 full Coltea Church: Brancovenesc Architecture https://qualla.com/coltea-church/ Photo credit Britchi Mirela, CC BY-SA 3.0 ro. The style takes its name from Constantin Brancoveanu, the Wallachian prince who ruled from 1688 to 1714 and patronized a fusion of Byzantine, Ottoman, and Italian Renaissance architectural elements that became the signature visual language of late seventeenth and early eighteenth...

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]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/coltea-church-wp/sxfs-coltea-church-brancovenesc-architecture.mp3 0:06 3 full Coltea Church: The First Hospital https://qualla.com/coltea-church/ Photo credit Andreiscurei, CC BY-SA 3.0 ro. The Colțea Hospital was inaugurated in 1704 and served Bucharest until well into the modern era, going through several rebuildings as medicine evolved. Cantacuzino endowed it with estates and tax exemptions to ensure it could keep treating the poor. Three chapels stood within the...

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]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/coltea-church-wp/sxfs-coltea-church-the-first-hospital.mp3 0:06 4 full Coltea Church: What Remains https://qualla.com/coltea-church/ Photo credit Stefan Jurca from Munich, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0. Among the church's old icons, four survive in particular condition: a Madonna and Child from 1786, a panel of the Three Holy Hierarchs, an image of Saints Cosmas and Damian attributed to the painter Parvu Mutu, and a silvered eighteenth-century icon of Saint Paraskeva painted in ...

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]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/coltea-church-wp/sxfs-coltea-church-what-remains.mp3 0:06 5 full