Răpciuni Church, Neamț county, year 1773
The hydropower works carried on Bistrița River between 1950-1960, determined the forcibly resettlement of 22 villages, out of which Răpciune (Răpciuni), Cârnu and Rețeș were definitely lost. As a result, over 18.000 inhabitants were forced to abandon the households which were to be sunk in the waters of Bicaz accumulation lake. In that context, the Village Museum managed in 1958, to rescue the “Holy Voivods” church from the village of Răpciuni, a valuable monument of religious architecture dated in the year 1773. The inscription that attests its age is carved with Cyrillic numerals on the door frame.
The church is erected on a small stone base, with the walls made of rectangularly carved spruce beams joined in “dovetail”, the last three beams under the eaves being prolonged in consoles. The roof is covered with rounded shingles and follows the building’s plan: the pentagonal apse of the altar, the rectangular nave with the two lateral alcoves and the porch with eight pillars, appended to the narthex. Carved crosses and rosettes decorate the pillars, the arch between the nave and the narthex, and the windows and door frames.
Inside, one can note the iconostasis with a typical structure of the 18th century, the furniture items, the candlesticks and the baptism font made from a tree trunk. The painting with scenes from the Calvary (in the nave) and the Old Testament (in the narthex) was made in two stages by local masters. A special rendering was used by Ioan Zugravul to paint the Last Judgment scene (in the narthex).
The Cyrillic inscriptions in the porch, at the moment almost indecipherable, offer precise historical information. They remind of the Russo-Turkish War in 1828 (“when the Moskals entered Moldavia, in the year 1828, April the 23rd”), of the snowy winter in 1830, of the cholera epidemies in 1831 and 1865, or of unusual events, such as the locust invasion in the year 1867.
