Photos

Rich carved stone decoration on the church dedicated to the Dormition of the Holy Virgin, in Ljubostinja Monastery.

The legends says that the monastery was built on a site where Princess Milica met Prince Lazar for the first time; and that had happened on the day of St Archdeacon Stefan to whom the earlier chapel on the same place had been dedicated. The construction of this foundation of Princess Milica and Prince Lazar started in 1388-89. After the battle of Kosovo, when Lazar was killed, Milica became a nun, as many widows of the Serbian soldiers did the same.

Architecturally, the church, dedicated to the Dormition of the Holy Virgin, belongs to the Morava School. Its ground plan has the form of a trefoil with a dome resting of four free-standing pillars. It is extended westward into a rectangular narthex with a blind calotte. The facade is embellished with rich muling that edge the doors and windows. A horizontal cordon cornice divides the walls into two zones: in the lower one, there are lancet and two-light windows, and the upper zone is ornamented with rose and wheel windows of unequal size with floral and geometrical patterns. In the threshold stone of the doorway between the narthex and the nave, the name of the "Protomaster Borovic Rade", the famous master-builder, is chiseled.

http://www.serbianunity.net/culture/history/
Serb_History/Monasteries/Ljubostinja/index.html