Petronel Zahariuc, A trip to Mount Athos and Constantinople in 1862
Romanian historiography contains a large number of diaries and accounts of foreigners who traveled over time through Romanian space. Instead, the number of stories of the same kind written by Romanians traveling abroad is quite small, although the interest in studying them is quite high. Therefore, I now add a story of a traveler (a pilgrim) probably called Alexandru Ion from Wallachia who traveled in the spring and summer of 1862 from Bucharest to Mount Athos and wrote several notes about the churches and other monuments they saw and studied in Constantinople (Tsargrad), Thessaloniki and several other settlements on the shores of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and of the Aegean Sea. The apocryphal legend of “the twelve Great Friday” precedes the description of the journey.

Keywords: Mount Athos, logbook, Constantinople, Thessaloniki

PETRONEL ZAHARIUC