Galata Monastery Galata Monastery The Galata Monastery () is a Romanian Orthodox monastery for nuns, founded at the end of the sixteenth century by Moldavian Voivode Petru Şchiopul, in the west of Iaşi, Romania. The monastery is located on the top of Galata Hill, and can be easily observed from different locations of Iasi. The church, surrounded by walls with loopholes and provided with a bell tower at the entrance, looks like a fortress, often serving as a place of defense and sometimes as a royal residence. Near the church on the hill, are places that provide panoramic views over the city.
The Fall of the Stone City The Fall of the Stone City The Fall of the Stone City () is a 2008 novel by the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. Apart from winning the Rexhai Surroi Prize for the best book of the year, in Kosovo; the novel was also shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2013. Kadare had previously written about his home city Gjirokastër in his earlier novels Chronicle in Stone and A Question of Lunacy. Characterizing it as "a masterful recuperation" from Kadare's previous novel The Accident, Peter Carty from The Independent went on to describe it as "an outstanding feat of