The princely Church of Saint Nicholas was erected by Stephen the Great between 1491 and 1492 and was rebuilt on the original model by the French architect Lecomte de Nouy between 1888 and 1904. This is the church where various Moldavian princes were crowned, including Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza, when the Romanian principalities were united. This is a tall and narrow edifice made of false brick, whose unique outside ornaments are the decreasing niches. Lying at the center of the city of Ia║i, the Dosoftei house bears the name of its first owner, Metropolitan Dosoftei, one of the great personalities of the Orthodox church in the 17th century. It is one of the few buildings preserved from that period. Owing to its tall portico with five arches, the house of this celebrated Moldavian chronicler is also known as the ôarched house.ö
The contribution of Dosoftei (1624-1693), a monk and later the Metropolitan of Moldova between 1671 and 1686, to Romanian culture involves primarily the dissemination of the first religious books translated from Slavonic and Greek into Romanian.
A writer, a translator and a printer, Dosoftei printed a collection of liturgical texts in Romanian in 1679. Carrying on the tradition of chroniclers initiated by Varlaam, Dosoftei set up a printing press in his own house, thus printing his own books and encouraging the use of the Romanian language in religious writing.
After its 1970 restoration, the Dosoftei House has sheltered the Department of old Romanian literature of the Museum of the Romanian Literature in Ia║i..
