Ardenica Monastery

The Monastery of the Nativity of the Theotokos in Ardenica or simply Ardenica Monastery is an Albanian Orthodox monastery, located 18 kilometers south of Lushnjë, Albania, along the national road that links Lushnjë to Fier. Built by Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos in 1282, after the victory against the Angevins in the siege of Berat, the monastery is famous as the place where, in 1451, the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg married Andronika Arianiti. In 1780 the Monastery started a theological school to prepare clerics in Greek Orthodoxy. It had an important library with 32,000 volumes, which was destroyed by a fire in 1932. The Church of Saint Mary within the monastery contains frescos by the Albanian Zografi Brothers, notably one of saint John Kukuzelis, born in Durrës, Albania.