Founded in 17th century by St. Basil ( one of the most important saints in Orthodox Christianity) monastery represents one of the most important and most beautiful monasteries in the entire region. Monastery is visited by up to million tourists and pilgrims (including Christian Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Muslim) every year.
Looking it from far away, monastery’s amazing architecture looks like it defies gravity. Built into the sheer cliff this wonder leaves everyone in question – how? How in poor Montenegro, occupied from every direction they managed to build something like this.
The goal was of course to preserve religion and tradition, as people were pushed away by Ottomans and had to survive in harsh environments, like this one.
Here St Basil started with three caves in the rock face. He decided to build the Church of the Presentation in the first cave, a bedroom for guests in the second cave and a chapel which would house religious artifacts in the third cave.
There was already a church below the monastery so he also added a house for monks and wheat milling here.
Except this, so called Upper Monastery, 20 minutes walk down the hill is Lower Monastery with Church of the Holy Trinity that was built in 1824. The lower Monastery is mainly used as monk residence and also has dorms for pilgrims.