Journal · updated 5 September 2026

The painted monasteries in a day: the right order and what to skip

Voroneț, Humor, Moldovița, Sucevița – the route that makes geographical sense, and what time to arrive to miss the coaches.

I've done this drive some fifteen times, with guests who had a single day and wanted “all the monasteries”. It can be done, but not in the order the map gives you. The order matters more than the hour you set off.

Start with Voroneț, at half past eight

Not because it comes first on the road, but because it is the one that empties. The coaches get there around ten, and between ten and five the courtyard belongs to nobody. If you go in at opening, the west wall is yours alone, with the light coming straight at it. It is the only hour of the day when the Last Judgement looks the way it was meant to.

You give a quarter of an hour to the wall, another ten to the south side, where Daniil the Hermit is, and you leave. Skip the museum. Seriously.

Humor at ten, because it's twelve minutes away

The two are so close that many do them the other way round and lose the light at Voroneț. Humor is small, low, without a tower, and that is exactly why it visits quickly: half an hour is enough, plus ten minutes if you climb the tower in the courtyard. From up there you see the Obcine, and it is the best photograph of the day.

Lunch in Gura Humorului, not on the road

It is the only place on the route where you eat well without hunting for it. After that comes an hour of driving, and it is better done on a full stomach.

Moldovița at one, Sucevița at three

From Gura Humorului to Vatra Moldoviței is forty minutes on the DN17A. At Moldovița you stay on the south wall, where the Siege of Constantinople is, and you go into the museum only for Petru Rareș's throne. Twenty minutes, no more.

Then you climb the Ciumârna pass, with the obligatory stop at the Palma monument, and drop down to Sucevița. It is the richest of them all and asks for two hours, but by three in the afternoon the groups have already left for Suceava. The north wall, with the Ladder of Virtues, stays in shade all day: it never burns out in a photograph.

What to skip

Putna. Not because it isn't worth it, but because it is a day in itself. With the tomb, the treasury and the embroideries, Putna is not a forty-minute stop; it is the reason you come back a second time. Cram it into this day and you do it badly, and lose Sucevița too.

What the day looks like, in short

Voroneț 8:30 · Humor 10:00 · lunch in Gura Humorului 11:30 · Moldovița 13:00 · the Ciumârna pass · Sucevița 15:00 · back at La Cuib around six. That's some 130 kilometres and four UNESCO monuments, without rushing anywhere.

For the opening hours of each, the entry fees, the photography rules and the things nobody tells you at the gate, we have written the guide to the 18 monasteries of Bucovina. This day is only one of the possible versions.