Ninety seconds on Stavropoleos Monastery
The doors close to visitors whenever an office is being sung, which happens morning, evening and late at night. It is a working monastery with a resident choir, so the hours it cannot be entered are the hours worth being outside it.
A small church of 1724 in a courtyard off the old commercial quarter, in the Brâncovenesc style, with a carved stone porch and a cloister of salvaged tombstones. It keeps the largest collection of Byzantine music manuscripts in the country.
The church takes twenty minutes and the courtyard beside it takes as long again, which is the part people stay for. Services run morning, evening and late at night, and the doors close to visitors while they are on, so arriving during one means standing at the back and listening, or coming back. The choir is the argument for the first option. Otherwise the gates are open through the day, roughly from half past eight until six, though the timings follow the offices and move with them. What the place is actually for becomes obvious about a minute after the noise of the surrounding streets stops at the gate.
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