Cheia Monastery

Cheia Monastery (Mănăstirea Cheia) is a Orthodox-Church complex in Romania, located southeast of Cheia resort. Territorially, it belongs to Măneciu commune, in Prahova County. The current monastery of monks was dedicated to the Holy Trinity; its roots may date back to the 17th century, but a stone church was only erected in the 1830s. While located in Wallachia and initially subordinated to its metropolitan bishops, Cheia's monastic community was always intimately linked with the Romanian communities of Transylvania, which sent shepherds and immigrants down the Teleajen under various regimes. The immediate area is one of the "keys" that allowed circulation between Transylvania and Wallachia, across what was for long also a political border, lasting to the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918. The monastery gained importance during the Kingdom of Romania, when the Ciucaș Mountains were opened for tourism by Gheorghe Becescu-Silvan and other hikers. This economic upswing was interrupted by World War I, when Cheia was occupied, then briefly annexed, by Austria-Hungary. Becescu-Silvan resumed his activities during the first years of Greater Romania, and was buried on the monastery grounds after his death in 1924. The monastery had by then been land-endowed and was in the process of being restored and expanded. In the late 1930s, it served as a place of punishment for Ol

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