Pidkamin Monastery
A fortified hilltop monastery with defensive walls and towers.
The Dominicans were invited to Pidkamin in 1464 by the owner of the settlement, Piotr Cebrowski. In 1519, according to the UGCC website, the monastery and the village were burned by the Tatars; karpaty.info writes that in that year the settlement was destroyed by the Ottoman Turks. The stone monastery and church were built from 1612 to 1695; in 1702 work began on defensive walls with two-tier towers, and in 1708 on the 56-metre bell tower (the UGCC website dates the walls, the bell tower and the towers to 1702). In 1727 the miraculous icon of the Mother of God was crowned here, and in 1780 the Austrian authorities began the dissolution of the monastery. In 1945 the Soviet authorities liquidated the monastery; from 1946 it housed a prison, later a psychoneurological care home. Since 1997 the monastery has belonged to the Studites of the UGCC; the restoration of the bell tower with EU funds was completed in 2022, and it can be climbed. Nearby is the Devil's Stone, a rock 16–17 m high that gave the settlement its name.
A working monastery. The hill is climbed on foot.