The frescoes
About 1,260 m², painted from 1604.
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Piva Monastery is a Serbian Orthodox monastery near Plužine in north-western Montenegro. Its church of the Dormition of the Virgin, built in 1573–86, is often called the largest Serbian Orthodox church raised under Ottoman rule: a plain stone basilica about 23 m long, with no dome, whose walls carry some 1,260 square metres of frescoes. It was founded by Savatije Sokolović, Metropolitan of Herzegovina and later Serbian Patriarch, a kinsman of the Ottoman grand vizier Mehmed Pasha Sokolović. It first stood near the source of the Piva; when Lake Piva, the Mratinje Dam's reservoir, was set to flood the site, the church was taken down stone by stone in 1969–82 and rebuilt about 2 km away on higher ground, its frescoes lifted off in over a thousand pieces and put back. Anonymous Greek painters decorated the nave from 1604. In the narthex the priest Strahinja of Budimlje painted the Akathist hymn to the Virgin, and a painter known as Kir Kozma, or Jovan in some sources, finished the lower walls in 1626; he also painted many icons on the gilded, carved iconostasis, completed in 1638–39. The treasury holds a 1495 Psalter from the Crnojević press of Cetinje and Savatije's omophorion of 1568, partly shown in the monastery museum. The monastery stands near Goransko on the Nikšić–Plužine road, about 8 km by road south of Plužine and Lake Piva, which pair well in one trip; allow about an hour. Žabljak lies some 25 km east as the crow flies, but the road between them over the Sedlo pass is usually closed by snow in winter; the Black Lake is about 23 km away in a straight line.
About 1,260 m², painted from 1604.
Gilded and carved; throne icons by Longin.
The hymn to the Virgin in 24 scenes.
Near Goransko, on the Nikšić–Plužine road, about 8 km south of Plužine
Not normally: the old site near the source of the Piva lies under Lake Piva. During a long drought in late 2011 the water drew back and the ruins of the old monks' lodgings, the monastery bakery and some graves came back into view.
Mehmed Pasha Sokolović, a kinsman of the founder, is said to have helped him win permission and funds to build. Local tradition sees him in the donor fresco by the south door, handing Savatije a model of the church to offer to the Virgin, a rare image of an Ottoman statesman in an Orthodox church.