Saint Nicholas Princely Church

While he named the right ktitor, the date is incorrect, and was fixed by Axinte Uricariul, who observed that 1491 is inscribed on the dedication above the entrance.

[1] A document of March 1677 indicates that Antonie Ruset had decided, together with Metropolitan Dosoftei, to turn the church into a second seat for the Moldavia Metropolis, alongside that in Suceava.

While the chronicles indicate Ruset prepared his grave here, he died poor in Constantinople, and Prince Constantin Cantemir was placed in his crypt for a time.

The school from the Saint Nicholas Church, begun by Constantine Mavrocordatos and by Metropolitan Nechifor, was reorganized by Iacov, eventually becoming among Moldavia's most renowned.

It lasted until the early 19th century as among the few institutions where Romanian was the language of instruction; pupils were taught writing, reading, grammar and liturgical music.

[1] It appears that when Sultan Mehmed IV spent a week in Iași in July 1672 while on the way to Poland, the church was used as a mosque and then remained closed until Ruset's renovation.

Unusually, from the late 18th century, the church had three altars (some sources speak of two chapels), where the liturgy was officiated in three languages (Romanian, Greek and Slavonic).

The building was in a very poor condition, particularly the added foyer, made of carved stone and irregularly-shaped boulders, the wooden ties of which had rotted.

The French architect André Lecomte du Nouÿ was selected to lead the restoration work, assisted by Nicolae Gabrielescu.

Mihail Kogălniceanu and others asked that this instead be rehabilitated, but the committee on historic monuments ultimately decided that only Stephen's original church should be restored.

Lecomte du Nouÿ returned to the church's initial plan, placing the walls and the spire in one vertical sweep and eliminating the buttresses, thus giving the whole a much more sleek appearance.

The exterior walls, above the stone base, were decorated with panels of visible brick and with traditional Moldavian elements such as rows of niches, discs of glazed and colored ceramic and large recesses.

Fragments of 17th-century painting that depicted Ruset, Duca and their families were saved; for a time, they were kept in the Old Metropolitan Cathedral, then in the Gothic hall of Trei Ierarhi before probably ending up in a museum.

The symbolic significance of the paintings is underscored by the presence of traditional Romanian costume in the allegorical figures surrounding the king and in the children.