The Dosoftei House (Casa Dosoftei) is a historic 18th-century merchant house on Palace Square in Iași, now home to the Museum of the Holy Hierarch Dosoftei the Metropolitan. Also known as the House with Arcades (Casa cu arcade), it is one of the oldest surviving civil buildings in the city and contains a collection devoted to early Romanian literature and printing.
The house once formed part of the commercial quarter of Sfânta Vineri, where rows of shops and merchants’ buildings extended through this part of Iași. It is the last surviving building from that group. Its compact stone structure is arranged over two floors, while the street façade is distinguished by a deep portico with arches supported by massive columns, a feature that probably served the commercial use of the building.
Although popularly known as Casa Dosoftei, the house was originally a merchant property rather than the documented residence of Metropolitan Dosoftei. The museum takes its name from the 17th-century Moldavian metropolitan, scholar, translator, and poet whose work played an important role in the development of Romanian-language religious literature. Dosoftei served twice as Metropolitan of Moldavia and produced works including the Psalter in Verse, published in 1673, as well as Romanian translations of liturgical and religious texts printed during his episcopate.
A museum of old Romanian literature opened in the house in 1970, and the permanent exhibition now occupies four rooms. Manuscripts, early printed books, documents, icons, crosses, chalices, and other religious objects trace the development of written Romanian culture from the medieval period onward. Highlights include a 14th-century Slavonic Pateric, the Apostol of 1559, regarded as the oldest dated Romanian manuscript, Varlaam’s Cazania of 1643, Dosoftei’s Psalter in Verse, and an early copy of Grigore Ureche’s Chronicle of the Land of Moldavia.
The museum is administered by the National Museum of Romanian Literature Iași, headquartered in the House of Museums.
