Argeș

Curtea de Argeș lies on the Argeș River beneath the Southern Carpathians. It was an early seat of the Wallachian princes, with a princely court and church at the centre of the emerging state. The Orthodox metropolitan also made his seat here, giving the town religious as well as political importance.

The court remained a leading residence during the fourteenth century, although the princes later favoured Târgoviște. In the early sixteenth century Neagoe Basarab commissioned a magnificent monastery church at Argeș. Consecrated in 1517, its richly carved stone and graceful towers expressed the prince's patronage and the artistic ties of Wallachia to the Byzantine world. The metropolitan seat moved to Târgoviște, but the monastery and princely church preserved the memory of the old capital and its rulers.