Veluće Monastery

Veluće Monastery is located in the village of the same name, surrounded with the famous Zupa vineyards, in central Serbia. It is away some 10 km southeast of Trstenik and 22 km from Krusevac, on the gentle slopes of Goc Mountain, on the road between Krusevac and Trstenik. The Veluće Church is dedicated to the Entrance into the Temple of our most Holy Lady the Theotokos and is in pretty good condition.

Original Veluće Monastery was called the Srebrnica, after the stream that flows next to the church and the tower on the nearby hill. According to the legend, the Veluće Monastery was founded at the end of the 14th century /1377-1378/ by Despot Jovan Brankovic and his brother Stevan and the Bishop Maxim. The latest researchers /Zivojin Andrejic/ have it that founders were the Despot Dejan and his wife Teodora before 1368 who had it painted form 1368 to 1371, as a family memory and the mausoleum in the inheritance territory of his parent, Despot Ivaniš. The construction of the church of Veluće Monastery was started ambitiously in the Morava architectural style in the form of inscribed cross with the inside semi-circled apses and the the outer five-sided appearance apses. Particularly interesting is the dome whose width below the dome space is one meter larger then its length. Veluće Monastery was built of layers of bricks and stone and two-light windows, but the top was finished much more modesty and was then covered with frescoes of limited artistic quality, but of exquisite narratives.

Apart from the portraits of royalty and donors in the nave with unclear names, there is also an additional gallery of portraits of the nobility in the narthex whose names are Oliver, Dejan, Bratan and Constantine, complicating full and right understanding of this church’s function and place in history of the post-Nemanide period, after demise of the last ruling emperor of the Nemanide dynasty in 1371. In the churchyard of the Veluce Monastery, rich in beautiful flowers and greenery, there is the old dormitory, built in 1833 during the reign of Prince Milos Obrenovic. In 1972 the new dormitory of the Veluce Monastery has been built, and in 1981 the monastic dining room was added. Nowadays Veluće Monastery is nunnery.