Description of the attraction
The Praskvitsa Monastery got its name from a small stream flowing nearby. The water in it smells like peaches ("praska" means peach). The church building is located in Pashtrovichi on the mountain above the Milocer beach. You can get from the coast to the monastery by a stone staircase, supposedly built by one Russian monk as a sign of obedience. There is a legend about the appearance of this staircase.
There was a man named Yegor Stroganov, who had a beloved daughter. The girl was seduced by a young rake. Upon learning of this, the father killed the young man in a duel, but he himself suffered - he lost one hand. The daughter, not wanting to forgive her father, ran away from her home. Then Stroganov himself decided to take a monk's hair and take a vow of silence within the walls of the Montenegrin monastery. And in order to atone for his sins and benefit people, he began to build a road that led to the monastery from the coast itself.
After ten years of construction, Stroganov suddenly had a volunteer assistant. And only on his deathbed did he learn that it was his repentant daughter. After her father's death, she was allowed to stay in the monastery, where she spent the rest of her life, and after that she was buried next to him.
The monastery complex includes two churches dedicated: one to the Holy Trinity and the other to St. Nicholas. It is believed that 1413 is the most likely date for the beginning of the construction of the monastery. It was then that a letter was issued from Sovereign Zeta, Balsha III, authorizing the construction of a monastery, in particular, and the church of St. Nicholas.
Many historical data about this building were lost irretrievably in 1812, when the original church of Balshi and the monastery building itself were destroyed by the French.
The church of St. Nicholas in its present form began to be built in 1884. Now the beautiful fence of the iconostasis, painted by the Greek icon painter of Corfu, Nikola Aspioti in 1863, is the main decoration of the interior of the new building of the church.
In the old cells of the monastery is located the most valuable monastery library, with a fund of more than 5000 books. Here, in the old cells, there is also an amazing museum, which includes a treasury in the funds of its unique exhibits, in which you can see the richest collection of icons, ancient weapons, various church items, handwritten books and documents. Among them (these documents) are kept letters of Russian royal persons: Catherine the Great and Paul 1. And among the treasures of the museum, the old monastic seal of this temple, the handwritten Gospel, which was donated to the monastery by the Russian Tsar Paul I in 1798, can cause great interest. The gold cross is considered the pearl of the treasury, which, presumably, was the property of King Dushan.
