The monastery of Caldarusani, as a perennial point of Roumanian spirituality, was build between 1637 and 1638 in the middle of the vast forest of Vlasia and its founder the great voivode Matei Basarab prince of Wallachia put its grounds on the place of an older and smaller monastery.
The great prince erected in this place a fortified construction as part of an ampler strategic structure for defending the country. This was the only possibility at that time when the Turcs of the Othman Empire as a suzerain power didn't allow the Romanian Countries to build fortresses for their defence. The prince Matei Basarab built high walls 6 to 7 meters height provided with a steeple tower that tramsformed this monastery into a fortress, that was also a refuge place for the people in the neighbourhood in those times of insecurity. The prince Matei Basarab who eas one of the greatest Romanian builders prepared himself for years by purchasing at his own expense the plots of land needed to endow the monastery.
The church whose patron is the Saint Great Martyr Dimitrie, the source of the Holy Oil, is of large size and four-leafed shaped with lateral apsedes; it is provided with a high steeple tower and two smaller ones.
The monastery of Caldarusani, one of the greatest in the country, a high value historical monument endowed with large material and spiritual possibilities, was ruled during its history bu abbots of high character, such as Abbot Filaret who became later the metropolitan bishop of the country; because he repaired the building of the monastery he is considered its second founder. The abbot Gheorghe Cernicanul is reckoned a representative of the cultural and spiritual renascence in this side of the country at the end of the XVIII-th century and the beginning of the XIX-th.
The monks of the community in the monastery of Caldarusani frequently used their time to copy and adorn the manuscripts that were kept in high honour in the monastery. The renowned school of religious painting of Ivan Rusu was still active b 1802 under the direction of Matei Polcovnicul. Among the art items existing in the monastery museum there are seven icons painted by the renowned Romanian painter Nicolae Grigorescu during the period 1854-1855; togerher with other masterpieces they make the artistic richness of the monastery museum.
The library of the monastery contained by the year 1802 a number of 1830 books, among which 921 were in Romanian and the remainder in Greek, Latin, Italian, French, German.
During the XIX-th century the life of the monastic community was continuously reinforcing and new buildigs were erected in 1821, such as the abbot's residence and the houses out of the fotrified walls.
The monastery of Caldarusani being a voivodal foundation had in its posession many land properties, more than hundred estates in seven districts of the country, villages, vineyards, water mills, orchards, fish ponds, salt-mines, oil wells, houses, shops, public bathing houses, rights of metayage, exemption from duties a.s.o.
The monastery of Caldarusani was especially during the XVIII-th century a guiding star for the development of those virtues that shaped a noble stature of the Romanian orthodox soul.