Vlatades Monastery was founded by the brothers Dorotheus and Markus Vlatadon, who were students of Gregory Palamas, in the latter half of the fourteenth century. It was first mention in a letter by Patriarch Matthew dated in 1400 to Metropolitan Gabriel of Thessalonica.
In 1387, Thessalonica and the monastery were occupied for the first time by the Ottoman Turks. While the monastic community held together, the monastery properties were sequestrated as royal property and the main church was converted into a mosque with the frescoes of its interior plastered cover. During the Turkish occupation a unit of Turkish troops, commanded by a cavus, was billeted at the monastery giving rise to the name Cavus Monastir, still often popularly applied to the monastery.
During the latter part of the sixteenth and most of the seventeenth centuries the condition of the Monastery of Vlatadon and its dependencies deteriorated. While supported by a succession of Patriarchs of Constantinople, the monks of the Monastery of Vlatadon attempted to recover and restructure their dependencies in Thessalonica.
By the mid-twentieth century the monastery became a meeting place for scholars and academics of the city. In 1965, the Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies was established that has worked closely with the Aristotelean University of Thessalonica. In recent years the Monastery of the Vlatades has been further renovated and expanded.
References:Rosenborg Palace was built in the period 1606-34 as Christian IV’s summerhouse just outside the ramparts of Copenhagen. Christian IV was very fond of the palace and often stayed at the castle when he resided in Copenhagen, and it was here that he died in 1648. After his death, the palace passed to his son King Frederik III, who together with his queen, Sophie Amalie, carried out several types of modernisation.
The last king who used the place as a residence was Frederik IV, and around 1720, Rosenborg was abandoned in favor of Frederiksborg Palace.Through the 1700s, considerable art treasures were collected at Rosenborg Castle, among other things items from the estates of deceased royalty and from Christiansborg after the fire there in 1794.
Soon the idea of a museum arose, and that was realised in 1833, which is The Royal Danish Collection’s official year of establishment.