I don’t like to take pictures inside churches because there’s always someone praying and I feel like intruding. But being at the church with the occasion of a baptizing I waited until everyone left and snapped a few quick shots. I don’t know if you had the occasion of visiting a Eastern Orthodox Church before, but what you see in today’s photographs is a pretty typical interior. Icons are not considered to be idols or objects of worship by the Eastern Orthodox, the thinking being that an icon is like a window and that is not the physical object that is venerated but rather the individual shown. Therefore orthodox churches have many icons adorning the walls, in fact many of them are completely covered in icons or frescoes. Also, as you can see in the second photograph, icons are often illuminated by a candle or oil lamp.
Heavenly photos! The icons and decorations are breath-taking! I hope they don't have a problem of people trying to steal the icons!
My favorite church in Bucharest is amazing inside as it is interesting outside. Excellent images: I have seen many Orthodox churches small and larges, but this is just… right! I noticed the fresh flowers and the the neat collocation of everything in sight, sign of passionate hands keeping this lovely church going.
All this glistening gold in the lamplight does seem to transport one to another world.
I'm surprised that all of this survived Soviet times. It's amazing the Russians didn't take all of Romania's valuables, but perhaps there were reasons why they didn't.
Leif: I am guessing here but I think the icons are just gold platted so they're not very valuable. I don't know if this is true but I read somewhere that with one gold coin one can plate an entire church.
Stine: The Soviets took what people call Romania's "treasure", or rather Romanians gave it to them for safekeeping and they refused to return it. There's even a wikipedia page on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Treasure