The limestone canyon of the Răut in Moldova, with a cave monastery cut into its sheer walls — cells, a chapel and a bell tower joined by passages through the rock. Monks lived here from the thirteenth century; the Soviet authorities closed it, and until the 1990s a single hermit remained in the caves. Below on the slope lie traces of Geto-Dacian fortifications and of a Golden Horde town that stood on the same ground.