Piva Monastery

Piva Monastery (Cyrillic: Пива; Manastir Pivski; alternates Church of Sv. Bogorodica or Church of the Assumption of the Holy Mother of God) is located in Piva, Montenegro near the source of the Piva River in northern Montenegro. Built between 1573 and 1586, it was rebuilt in another location in 1982. It is the largest Serbian Orthodox church constructed during the Ottoman occupation in the 16th and 17th centuries. Noted for its frescoes, the monastery's treasures also include ritual objects, rare liturgical books, art, objects of precious metals and a psalm from the Crnojevići printing press (1493–96), which was the first in the Balkans. These are displayed in the monastery's museum.

History

Founded in 1573, or 1575, and completed in 1586 through the expenditures of the Metropolitan bishop of Zahumlje and Herzegovina Savatije Sokolović, who later became the Serbian Orthodox patriarch, the monastery is dedicated to the Dormition of the Theotokos. The construction workers were brothers named Gavrilo and Vukašin.