Chiajna Monastery

The church now widely called Chiajna Monastery is identified in historical and architectural research as Giulești Monastery. The familiar name is popular, and the distinction matters because the surviving record is fragmentary. The complex stood at Bucharest’s western edge, where later construction, including a railway, altered the former grounds.

The church was unusually large for its setting. The Bucharest Archdiocese records that construction began during the first reign of Alexandru Ipsilanti, with archival evidence placing work by a team led by master builder Johann Rathner around 1780. Work was interrupted in 1782. Another historical source cited by the Archdiocese says the monastery was completed during the rule of Nicolae Mavrogheni, in the late 1780s. The sequence has been reconstructed from scattered documents and archaeology rather than a complete building archive.