The Brothers Do the Balkans

Manasija Monastery


	We hit Manasija Monastery before noon. This Monastery, so heavily fortified as to seem a Byzantine Fort, was built between 1408-1415 by Despot Stefan during a time when invasion by the Turks was a given (the Serbs had just lost heavily to them at the famous Kosovo Field of the Blackbirds). There are 11 towers stretching along a high defensive wall. The Monastery itself was a haven for writers and academics and represents the pinnacle of a Serbian Renaissance that was just heading into decline under Turkish rule that would last for the next 400 years. The frescoes on the inside of the church are the finest type of their genre and 'represent the culmination of an artistic movement that had been developing and improving for centuries.'