Biserica Domnească din Caracal
The princely church from Caracal

Summary/Abstract: This article presents the results of the archaeological campaigns of 1973 and 1974, focusing on the dating and the style of the princely church from Caracal. The church, as it stands today, reveals the existence of two construction phases. The first phase dates from the second half of the sixteenth century, when the chancel, the nave and the open threshold were built using bricks and stone blocks taken from the Roman ruins nearby. The second phase dates from the end of the seventeenth century or from the beginning of the eighteenth, when the church was elevated, the initial threshold was walled up and another threshold with trilobite arcades was adjoined. In this phase had been used only local bricks, of a very different size compared with those from the first phase. The church has been built on a necropolis in use from the end of the fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. The first documented owners of the Caracal estates are Marga the Older, Neagoe Basarab’s sister, and her husband Marcea chamberlain. Most likely, Marga and Marcea have founded the noble chapel around which the first necropolis was organized. Their descendants continued to live in Caracal up to the end of the sixteenth century and they may well be the founders of the church. However, the possibility that the church was built during the reign of Michael the Brave, which had numerous estates in the region, should not be ruled out. The main feature of the initial churches, of the first one erected by Marga and of the second one built by her descendants, was the open western space, apparently borrowed from the Snagov monastery and from the metropolitan church of Târgovişte.

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