Description of the attraction
Hincu Monastery is one of the oldest women's monasteries in the south of Moldova, located 70 kilometers from Chisinau. It was built in 1678 and for several centuries was one of the richest monasteries in Bessarabia.
There is a beautiful legend about the founding of the monastery, according to which the Moldavian boyar Mihalcha Hincu hid in this place with his daughter Praskovya during one of the Tatar-Mongol raids. After the miraculous deliverance from death, Mikhalcha Hincu promised his daughter that he would build a temple on this place and he kept his promise.
The wooden temple and monastic cells often suffered and were devastated during the Tatar invasions, so from time to time the monastery was completely deserted. In 1771, the skete was restored, and in 1784, under the leadership of the abbot of the monastery, Hegumen Varlaam, new cells for the monks were built, the wooden church and the temple of the Assumption of the Most Holy Theotokos were restored.
In 1836, the skete was officially transformed into a monastery, at the same time, instead of the wooden church of St. Reverend Paraskeva, a stone summer church with a bell tower was erected, and later - a winter Uspenskaya church with 28 stone columns adorning the facade of the temple. At that time, a barn, a distillery, a carpentry workshop, a smithy functioned on the territory of the monastery, and a boarding school for orphans was opened. One of the richest and most extensive libraries of that time was collected in the Khnkovo monastery.
In 1949, hard times came for the monastery - it was officially closed, and later transferred to the needs of the Codriy pulmonary sanatorium. The building of the summer church turns into a club for young people, and the winter one - into a warehouse, valuables are plundered, the graves of priests are destroyed.
Only in 1992, after the return of the monastery to the believers, work began to restore the temple, and over time it becomes one of the most visited by pilgrims and tourists in the country.
