Starting from Suceava, a three to five day round trip allows you to visit the region's main monasteries: Dragomirna, Voronet, Humor, Arbore, Sucevita, Moldovita and Putna. The monastic groups of buildings, nestled in bucolic valleys, hold churches decorated with magnificent biblical frescoes. Their major aim was to stimulate the warrior-farmers' faith in their fight against the Ottoman invader. The monasteries are inhabited by communities of nuns and priests, to whom pilgrims come, wishing to be blessed. The crowds of pilgrims who come and go every day are testament to the avid faith of the local community. During the dark years of dictatorship, Bucovine preserved its identity in the shade of its Orthodox monasteries. Nowadays, it is around its steeples that the soul and heart of the country are being reborn. At the foot of monasteries, village women sell woven fabrics, rugs, painted eggs made on long winter evenings. The delicate mosaics of the eggs symbolically evoke the monasteries' frescoes. Here, a whole spiritual life is reborn out of an egg.