At the Old Orhei archeological complex several monumental stone constructions draw attention, which are of great interest both from the scientific and museographic points of view. Among these five objects are distinct: the Gaetic fortress, the medieval fortress, the bathing rooms, the khan and the church.

The Gaetic fortress

The oldest fortified construction at the Old Orhei is the Gaetic fortress on the Butuceni promontory. The territory where the traces of the once fortification has an oval prolonged form oriented in the eastern and western directions. The northern part of the territory, the highest one, is rocky and tall to 60 meters over the Raut’s water. The southern and western parts of the of the of the surfaces surrounded by the Raut’s riverbed decrease in height, reaching 2-3 meters above the water. The surface occupied by the fortress links to the surrounding much higher territory through a narrow passage, which could easily be blocked. The place was favorable for building a fortress.

The archeological excavations showed that there were people living on the top of the Butuceni hill starting with the VIII-VII centuries BC. In the V century BC the inhabitants fortified the establishment, later on brought changes to the defensive system. Traces of some fortifications found after the archeological excavations show us that at first the whole territory form the Raut’s curve had been fortified. In the narrowest point of the of the river’s curve the inhabitants made many ditches and ground walls next to them, beginning by the edge of the rock in the northern part and finishing at the Raut’s bank on the bed. The trenches were about 3.5 meters and 4.5-7 meters wide. The people from the fortress changed the highest part of the hill in a citadel protected from the north by the Raut’s rock, and from the other parts being surrounded by a beam, stone and ground palisade. At the external part of the palisade a protection ditch was dug. The passage into the citadel was through a special gate in the eastern end of the citadel. Not to far from the gate, outside the citadel specialists have uncovered the ruins of a wall made of big blocks of local limestone. This wall originates from a huge gate built under the influence of the Greek fortresses on the Black Sea. The discovery of the traces of a religious building on the highest point of the citadel, in its center, next to the rocky bank of the Raut river is of great interest.

The religious place at Butuceni was of round form and consists of a stone hearth surrounded by three rows of pillars. In the first circle of pylons there are holes, in the second - six, and in the third one – twelve. The archeological materials found on the sanctuary place are from the IV-III centuries BC. It is presumed that this building had the signification of a calendar.

The Butuceni fortress was left at the end of the III century BD – beginning of the II century as a result of German and Baestarnae tribes’ invasions. The inhabitants continued to activate within an unfortified settlement on the riverbank.

Medieval Fortress

At the beginning of the XIV century the Tatar-Mongolians had occupied the space between the Carpathians and the Dniestr. On the headland between the Trebujeni and Butuceni villages from the valley of the river, was built a new city – Sehr-al-Djedid (meaning New City) in the place of an old native settlement called Orhei (meaning fortification, reinforcement). Experts in all fields of urban household from the Crimea and other occupied centers were brought to the new establishment, with the main goal to redo the conquered “city” into a Oriental like center. At this point a grand building begun. The existing small ground and wood fortress was destroyed, and a new stone fortress was built in its place.

The engineers and architects, involved in the building of the citadel, had to position it in the space between the rock and the central entrance road in the city. It also had to be squares, its entrance to the south. But because of the rock, whose edge was directed from the north west to south east, the builders had to build the northern wall on the verge, and to shorten the eastern side in order to maintain the north south orientation of the building. In the end, the fortress got a trapezoidal form with its sides of 127 meters, 121.9 meters, 107 meters and 92.5 meters. The wall was 1.9 meters thick. The citadel had a decorative bastion at each corner and two semicolons on the exterior side of the walls, forming the southwestern corner of the building. The entrance in the citadel was meant on the southern side of the building, more to its southeastern corner, with a portal made from big blocks of stone linked among them with iron cramps.

A great building annexed to the north wall was in the interior of the citadel. Having its entrance in the south, the building as the fortress had an irregular form and a winding plan. The eastern wall of the building was shorter than the western one. The walls of the building were made form square bricks of 25x25x5 cm each. Only the bricks burned to red and dried in the sun were used. Lime mortar and tossed bricks or usual clay were also used.

The building had 2 different sized rooms. In the center it had a spacious room with a underground burial vault. Some materials point out that the central room of the building was a mosque, with a basement and four lateral compartments located at each cardinal point. The other rooms were congregated around the mosque. The basement of the mosque was arranged as a tomb, in which an important person was buried. The tomb was lined with big stone blocks taken from another building’s wall. Some blocks had fashioned sides and decorated. A stone plate had an inscription with Arab ornament. The majority of the stone blocks came probably from a city mosque and from the gates of the courts of a nearby khan. The tomb had an arched ceiling made from stone blocks too. To get into the tomb was possible through a special opening in the ceiling, covered by a special stone plate with a deep hollow in it.

After the city was freed of the Golden Horde occupation, the building inside the citadel became the residence of the magistrate of Orhei district. The entrance in the building was provided with a patio, it got the aspect of local Moldovan houses. The tomb was transformed in cellar, where food supplies were kept. It is also possible that the underground of magistrate’s palace was used as prison. After remaking it the entrance was an opening in the northeastern corner of the tomb.

The Chief magistrate’s palace had burned, probably, in 1510, when the Tatars fired the entire city. The marks of the fire in the building can be observed everywhere. The archeological researches let us conclude that the walls of the building are in a bad condition. The burned bricks were breaking down, and the dried one was decaying because of humidity. The wall of the palace may be uncovered and preserved only under the ceiling of a pavilion.

Feredeu - The bathing rooms

The ancestors of the Romanians meant by bathing rooms (feredeu) a public place used for bathing. In a document about Old Orhei the place where the place where the bathing rooms was. When the archeologists asked natives where the place called “Feredeu” is, they pointed the territory on the bank of Raut, next to the wall over the river, upward from the actual bridge. In that place the archeologists found the walls of a fundament of a stone building.

The archeologist Gheorghe Smirnov, the chief of the work site, and his colleagues after researches concluded that the discovered foundations on the riverbank, by the ford belong to a public bathing place in oriental style.

The form of the building was a rectangular. The length was 40 meters and the width 23 meters. The walls were made form a craggy, little processed stone. Better processed were the door blocks. The bath had two sections, probably one for women, and another for men. The bathing rooms were of different sizes. All the rooms had aqueducts from clay pipes passing through the wall. The whole building had central heating like the ancient thermals. The warm air was circulating in the empty space under the stone floor, warming it up.

Some rooms were lined with marble plates. There was a special room for resting after the bath. There were stone chairs and table in it. The bath, whose foundations are preserved till today, is one of three bathing places made in the first half of the XIV century in different parts of the city. The fact that the locals did not forget their place is that make us believe that they functioned even after the conquerors were driven away and the city was freed.

The Khan

The khan is a terrain of rectangular form with the dimensions of57.7x51.5 meters, and a surface of 1 861.55 square meters. A stone wall with a width of 1.3 meters surrounds it. The khan’s court is oriented from the north to south. The entrance is on the northern side. It provided with two pillars made of well-processed stones linked with iron cramps. The external facade was lined with fashioned and decorated stones. On the building’s northeastern corner the architect designed a six-sided bastion.

Next to the court, was another smaller building, but without a bastion and with two gates. One gate to the north and another one to the south. Through one gate you could enter in a carriage in the khan’s court, and through the other one to leave. It is presumed that the pillars of this building were decorated with cut and fashioned stones.

The southern gate of the smaller yard was covered with rocks. Perhaps from these portals the fashioned stone blocks were taken and used to build the funeral tomb in citadel’s palace. Probably, mainly due to this the gate was closed for good.

Galleries and rooms for clients, carriages and horses for these were arranged along the interior walls of the khan. Khans of this type are known both form archeological and ethnographic sources. In Bucharest a khan of this kind was preserved till today. It is known as the Manuc Khan, because a Turkish refugee with Armenian origins - Manuc Bei - built it. Manuc Bei had a castle in the town of Hincesti too.

After the city was freed from the Golden Horde subjugation, around the khan’s buildings and living places were built. Some of them clung to the building’s stone walls. The fact that no living places were build inside the khan makes us believe that khan functioned and after the city was freed. Future researches will let us know for sure if this hypothesis holds through.

The church

To the south east from the khan the foundations of a church and traces of a Christian Orthodox cemetery were discovered. The building with all it s compartments: altar (sanctuary), nave, pro-nave has 18 meters in length. The walls have a width of 1.6 meters, but in the eastern part of the aspid of the altar the wall was widened with 0.8 meters. The church is peculiar due to its widened pro-nave, and the four corners of its western wall. Between the nave and pro-nave was a stone wall. The entrance in the building was on the southern wall of the pro-nave.

In 1950s Gheorghe Smirnov begun researching the churches foundations but the excavation reports were not preserved. The remnants of the building suffered when the museum was formed and the preservation and partial restoration works of the church’s foundation had begun. A layer of ground of about 0.6 meters, counting from the stepping level, was taken out of the church’s interior. This was done in order to let visitors see the lower part of the of the foundation wall. This measure however led to the falling in of the wall. The restaurateurs also took out the wall separating the nave and pro-nave, and placed the opening of the entrance in the southern wall of the nave. In order to establish the scientific reality, researches for specification were performed in 1994-1995. In the result of these researches in the southeastern space of the pro-nave the hole of a grave older than the church building was found. In the hole, however no grave was found. Probably the archeologist Gh. Smirnov researched the funeral. He mentions that in the church a grave was found. Traces of rich garments, possible belonging to a priest, were found in it. The pit of the grave was oriented from northwest to the southeast, almost perpendicularly to the church. It is necessary to point out that at the lower level of the church’s foundation, by the wall between the nave and pro-nave, a hollow with the skeleton of a dog or of a lamb, and a hole for a large pillar. The grave, oriented different than the church, makes us believe that earlier this place was another building. May be an older church.

The specification researches had proved that the foundation of the stone church was laid out over a hole from the XV century. After the building was finished the first row of stones of the wall situated over the hole, got down together with the softer land from the hole. This fact permits to draw the conclusion that the stone church was built not too long after the hole from the XV century, being left filled with land, trash and ruins of burned walls. Probably the ground from the hole had been stamped down during about 30-50 years. If the assumption is correct, than the respective church could be built in the middle or the second half of the XV century. It is curious that namely in this period churches with widened pro-naves appeared, like the case of the saint place of Old Orhei.

The archeologists have pointed out the remnants of a church nearby the stone citadel. The church was made out of wood and it had burned. Very interesting is the fact that in this saint place between the years 1480-1484 pan Vlaicu Gales was buried. He was a cousin of Moldavia’s great king Stefan the Great and brother of the chief magistrate of Orhei district. Since the tombstone from the deceased Vlaicu was preserved, and experts decoded the inscription from it, it was possible to determine when the church was founded and who was its henefactor.

Ion Hancu

• Foreword
• The archeological complex Old Orhei
• Monumental Buildings
• Archeological researches in the years 1996-1998
• Orhei Codrii
• The chronology of the medieval stone fortress
• Cave Monasteries
• The index of early medieval archeological monuments