Three churches carved one beneath another in a chalk hill
More than a thousand years ago, near Murfatlar in south-eastern Romania, someone cut six small churches, cells, galleries and tombs into the chalk, on three levels. Three of the churches sit one beneath another in the same block of rock. What you see is the complex as Global Digital Heritage and Romania's National Heritage Institute scanned it with a laser.
20 km west of Constanța · closed to visitors: visit it here, in the scan
Scroll: a blade descends through the chalk and opens them one by one.
Marius Comper · 28 September 2026
Where we are
A chalk hill in Dobruja, by the Danube–Black Sea Canal
The complex is on the north-west slope of Tibișir hill, next to the town of Murfatlar, about 20 kilometres west of Constanța. The valley below the hill is now the Danube–Black Sea Canal.
The quarry face behind this card stretches about 75 metres, seen from the north-west. The old rooms are cut into the rock; the stairs, walkways, fences and roofs are modern. The plan in the corner shows which part of the complex you are seeing.
the scanned surface, with its photographs
rock cut by the blade (the back of the scanned surface, not a measured volume)
no scanned surface
the line of the cut
11 June 1957
It began with a blast in a quarry
On the afternoon of 11 June 1957, blasting in the chalk quarry brought down the layer of earth above a small church and uncovered its entrance. This is B1, cut higher than B3 and B4 (the museum puts it at about the level of B2): about 6 metres long and 2 wide, with three rooms in a row from west to east.
The blade on screen cuts the hill through its middle, and the three rooms appear one after another. The quarry then ate the hill around it, so today the complex stands on the edge of a cliff. The stairs, walkways and fences in the scan are modern.
A block of chalk with three churches inside
In front of B1 stands a block of chalk about 9.5 metres on each side, joined to the hill by a strip 3 metres wide. Inside it, carved one beneath another, are churches B2, B3 and B4.
From outside you see none of them. To see them, you have to cut the rock.
Top level
B2, the smallest, collapsed long ago
The blade now cuts the block horizontally. The blue-grey shows the cut rock: it is the back of the scanned surface, not a measured volume. What has colour is the scanned surface of the rooms below; what is dark was not scanned.
At the very top was B2: 4 × 2.2 metres, with a narthex, a nave and an altar curving to the south-east. Its roof fell in antiquity, and its walls now stand at most a metre and a half. Today the block is under a modern covering, and only the remains of B2 survive beneath it. A tunnel led down to the church below.
Middle level
B3: an altar, three crypts and a spiral gallery
B3 has only a nave and an altar. The nave is 2.5 × 2 metres and 2.1 metres high, according to the description published in 2009, which repeats the measurements of the 1950s–60s excavations; the Constanța museum gives 4.5 × 2 for the whole church. Its altar is the only one in the complex whose stone table stands free of the wall.
Around it are graves, three crypts and a gallery that coils like a snail shell, perhaps an ossuary. On the east wall of the nave alone there are about 50 crosses, and two ships are scratched into the gallery that climbs to B2. From a side room, an opening in the floor leads straight into B4.
Bottom level
B4, the largest, with a thick pillar in the middle
B4 is 7 × 3.5 metres. The vault of the nave rests on a central pillar, and the altar, one step higher, opens onto the nave through three arches outlined in red paint. In the scan it is about 2.3 metres from floor to vault.
The entrance is on the west side, more than a metre above the ground level of the time: it was probably reached by a ladder. The church's axis deviates 10 degrees from the Orthodox eastward orientation. The walls of B4 carry most of the complex's Slavonic inscriptions, a passage from the Gospel of Mark, a labyrinth and, on the east wall, what seems to be the plan of a church, sketched in the chalk.
Three levels, three stages
The archaeologists who redrew the plan of the complex in 2009 link its three levels to three stages of work that followed one another fairly quickly: at the top, B1 and sector E; in the middle, B3; at the bottom, B4. They do not say which came first.
The Constanța museum reckons the six churches were in use for about half a century, generally one after another. The traces of smoke in B1 are faint: services were held there only briefly.
The south end
Sector E: two more churches and the burial galleries
At the south end of the complex, on the top level, are two more small churches. E3, about 6 × 3.5 metres, is largely destroyed. E5, cut deeper into the rock, has a nave about 3 metres square and 2.2 metres high.
From E5 a small opening leads into five burial galleries. Twenty graves were found across the whole complex. With B1–B4, E3 and E5, there are six churches.
What the scan does not show
The scan shows the shape of the rooms, not the scratches on their walls. The more than 500 graffiti documented since 2021, 210 of them texts, are fine incisions in chalk, and many are fading: in 2009 the archaeologists wrote that the number still visible was falling day by day.
You will find them below, grouped by script: the ones that can be read and the ones nobody has deciphered.
A depiction of the Basarabi cave complex on display at the History Museum in Constanța. The model marker points to B4, where sources place most of the Slavonic inscriptions; the photo record does not locate the wall shown within the complex.Photo: CristianChirita, Wikimedia Commons; CC BY-SA 3.0. Resized and converted to WebP.
Cut the block yourself
Lower the blade and watch the three churches appear, one beneath another. Drag the scene to turn it.
It is a complex cut into chalk, which archaeologists interpret as a monastery, on the north-west slope of Tibișir hill, next to the town of Murfatlar (called Basarabi in 1924–1965 and 1975–2007), on the bank of what was the Carasu valley and is now the Danube–Black Sea Canal, 15 kilometres from the coast of south-eastern Romania. In the 2009 archaeologists' count, used here, it has six small churches (B1, B2, B3, B4, E3 and E5); the project running since 2021 describes them as four superimposed churches and two chapels. It also has cells, galleries and graves on three levels, in an investigated area of about 200 × 50 metres. It is traditionally dated to the 9th–11th centuries, narrowed by Romanian archaeologists to around the 10th, when Dobruja belonged to the First Bulgarian Empire; the international team coordinated by the National Archaeological Institute in Sofia since 2021 moved the upper limit to the 12th century.
Its walls carry writing in four scripts — Greek, Glagolitic, Cyrillic and Turkic runes — and drawings: crosses, horsemen, ships, a labyrinth. The runes, the most numerous, have not been deciphered. The complex is a listed monument (LMI code CT-I-s-A-02585), closed to the public and decaying.
The dimensions come from the description published in 2009 by Oana Damian, Andra Samson and Mihai Vasile, which repeats the measurements of the 1950s and 1960s excavations. Where the Constanța museum gives different figures, we show them alongside.
The churches of the complex, from the top down
Church
Level
Size
What sets it apart
B1
top
about 6 × 2 m, 2 m high (museum: 2–2.15 m)
Three rooms from west to east; entrance on the north side. On the walls: crosses, a horseman, horses, rabbits, Cyrillic writing and runes.
B2
top, in the chalk block
4 × 2.2 m
The smallest; collapsed in antiquity, walls surviving to 1.5 m.
B3
middle
nave 2.5 × 2 m, 2.1 m high (museum, whole church: 4.5 × 2 m)
Free-standing altar table; three crypts, a spiral gallery, about 50 crosses on the east wall.
B4
bottom
7 × 3.5 m
The largest; central pillar, altar with three arches outlined in red; most of the Slavonic inscriptions.
E3
top, south end
about 6 × 3.5 m
Largely destroyed. The 2009 article counts two rooms in its description and three in its summary; Ion Barnea, three; the museum, four.
E5
top, south end
nave about 3 × 3 m, 2.2 m high
Cut deeper; it leads into five burial galleries.
The chalk block cut at three heights, from the scan: the top level, where B2 was, under the modern covering; B3, with its round gallery; B4, with its pillars and the three altar openings facing east-south-east. North is up; each square is 12 metres across.Drawn from The Basarabi-Murfatlar Cave Complex, Global Digital Heritage and GDH-Afrika, CC BY 4.0
The two sources disagree in a few places, and we have not chosen between them: the 2009 archaeologists put B3's side rooms to the south, the museum to the west; for the burial in B4, the 2009 archaeologists give a crypt in the south wall and a grave in the west wall, the museum only the west one. The 2009 archaeologists also write, in their summary, that the altars of B2–B4 face south-east, and in their description of B3, east. In the scan, the three altar openings of B4 face east-south-east.
For a lesson on the early Middle Ages on the Lower Danube, or on how archaeologists work. The page projects well and works on a phone.
Where we are (1 minute). The map on the second card: Dobruja, the Danube, Constanța. The corner plan always shows which part of the complex is in view.
Old and new (2 minutes). On the overview, students find what is modern: stairs, walkways, fences, roofs. Everything else is carved chalk.
The blade (4 minutes). Scroll to "Cut the block yourself" and lower the blade: B2 at the top, B3 in the middle, B4 at the bottom. The blue-grey is the cut rock; what has colour is the scanned room.
The walls (3 minutes). The section "Four scripts and drawings on the same wall": which can be read, which cannot.
Questions for discussion: What do we see in the scan, and what do we have to guess? Why would anyone carve churches one beneath another? Do we know the order in which they were carved? What can a laser scan not show? Why does one place have four scripts? To project, the drawing of the three levels above shows the block from above, north up.
Pick one below. The colour says whether we can read it. Many hands scratched them, at different times: monks, pilgrims and quarry workers.
A diagram, not a copy of the wall: it shows the four scripts and the drawings, not what they look like.
readable
visible, not readable
undeciphered
Over 500 graffiti in all, of which 210 are texts, in four scripts; 70 of them were recorded for the first time since 2021. Many can no longer be seen with the naked eye.
Turkic runes
About 60, in the 2009 inventory
undeciphered
Most of the markings at Basarabi are written in Turkic-type runes, the same kind of signs as on the Pliska Rosette and on the walls of the first Bulgarian capital. The language is probably Bulgar. After many attempts at decipherment, no reading is accepted by all, and the script looks mixed.
Cyrillic
20, in the 2009 inventory, plus new ones
readable
The 2009 inventory counted 20 texts in the Cyrillic alphabet, the largest layer among the scripts we can read. In 2024, two more newly found Cyrillic graffiti were published, from the narthex of church B4.
Glagolitic
One Old Slavonic text
readable
A single text in Old Slavonic, in Bulgarian recension, written in the Glagolitic alphabet, the oldest Slavic alphabet; it places the monastery in the world of the First Bulgarian Empire, in the tenth century.
Greek
Three, in the 2009 inventory
readable
The 2009 inventory counted three inscriptions in Greek letters, a sign that Greek was also written on the chalk walls; the alphabet alone does not tell us where the writers came from. One is the “dated” graffito in B4, read by Oikonomides as “March, indiction 10, year 6490”, that is, 982, a contested reading. In 2024 Pantelis Charalampakis proposed a new reading from observations on site: the graffito sits above the entrance to B4's crypt, is probably linked to commemorating the dead and, from its letter forms, dates to the end of the tenth century.
Drawings
Figures, crosses, ships, a carved creature
visible, not readable
Beyond letters, the walls carry incised figures, crosses and ships; one of them was called Viking by some, a contested claim explained below. A block carved with a winged creature is kept at the museum in Constanța.
Among the Old Slavonic texts, religious and commemorative in kind, are a text from the Gospel of Mark, on the west wall of the narthex, memorials with names — a priest named Aian, Simeon and Jupan Gheorghe — and one of the named, Toupan, says he cut the St George chapel into the chalk.
The complex came to light on the afternoon of 11 June 1957. The modern quarry was widening its chalk workings westward, blasting the sterile layer that covered the massif. Part of it collapsed above church B1, on the highest level, and laid bare its entrance.
That summer the digs began, run by the Institute of Archaeology in Bucharest and the Dobruja Regional Museum. The team was Ion Barnea, in charge of the site, with Virgil Bilciurescu, Petre Diaconu, Adrian Rădulescu and Radu Florescu. They cleared the sterile layer around church B1, found a dwelling or church north-east of it, rooms C1 and C2, the E galleries and a dwelling to the south-south-west, and drew the surveys of the inscriptions and drawings and the general plan. Damage began early too: tourists touched the writings on the walls, and the E galleries were badly hit by weather after an arcade collapsed.
On 1 September 1960 the site passed to the Directorate of Historical Monuments, which cut it off from the quarry and stopped the water leaks. Joint digs with the Institute of Archaeology uncovered church B2, then the mouth of gallery H, leading down to the middle level, with church B3, and the lower one, with church B4. In 1961, surface dwellings came to light, with a small cemetery, fire hearths and ten human and animal skeletons. In 1962, two more quarry basins with crosses on their walls, plus iron tools known today only from photographs: six axes or picks, a strike-a-light, a nail and three knives. Then consolidation stopped for lack of funds.
The traditional dating — the late ninth to the early eleventh century, narrowed by Romanian archaeologists to the tenth on the pottery, the markings and the link with the great stone vallum, 59 kilometres long and dated after 943, inscribed on a block in its foundation — was revised by the international team coordinated since 2021 by the National Archaeological Institute with Museum in Sofia, with the Constanța museum and the University of Gothenburg, which raised the upper limit to the twelfth century. The last Cyrillic inscription is from the fourteenth: it may mark the end of the complex's use, or just the passing of one of its last visitors. The link with the First Bulgarian Empire, to which Dobruja then belonged, concerns the tenth-century phase, and the complex counts as a relic of the monasticism widespread in Bulgaria in that century.
Two markings give years: a Slavonic inscription right of the entrance to church B1, read by Damian P. Bogdan as year 6500, that is, 992, and the Greek graffito with year 6490, that is, 982. Both readings are contested.
Where
The north-west slope of Tibisir hill, on the bank of what was the Carasu valley, now the Danube–Black Sea Canal, 15 kilometres from the coast
When
Ninth to eleventh centuries in the traditional dating, with the upper limit revised to the twelfth; contested readings give 982 and 992
What
Rock-cut churches, among them the four labelled B1–B4, cells, galleries, crypts and tombs, on three levels
Status
Listed monument, code CT-I-s-A-02585
Getting there
Closed to visitors; the complex is sealed and decaying
One of the drawings at Basarabi is a ship. Some Romanian scholars saw a Viking vessel in it, a sign that Northmen might have reached Dobruja. The claim travelled well: the caption of the photograph of the graffiti wall at the Constanța museum speaks of “Scandinavian-style” images.
Other scholars contested it. Vladimir Agrigoroaei first rejected the Viking claim, then re-examined it in 2008 against a similar graffito found in Sweden, with spirals at the ends and ropes tied to the mast. The question stayed open: the Basarabi ship has spirals and ropes too, but that is not proof. On another view, local monks may have scratched the drawing during the Rus' invasion of Bulgaria.
The ship remains what the rest of the complex is: a mark whose meaning is undecided. You can look at it; you cannot read it.
The complex is decaying fast. Of the E galleries only flaking walls remain, and in churches B1, B3 and B4 and in room C1 the walls are exfoliating. The shelter was never finished: it covers a quarter of the complex and lets no air through. The town's tourism papers call the complex unvisitable, and in 2009 the archaeologists wrote that the visible graffiti grow fewer every day.
So a race against time has begun. Led by Dr. Evgenia Komatarova-Balinova of the National Archaeological Institute with Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (NAIM-BAS), an international team spent years documenting the complex with laser scans and 3D models. The project was carried out with the Constanța museum (MINAC), with some twenty researchers contributing at different stages. In May 2025 the team was allowed one last field expedition, at the end of May; afterwards the monastery was to close indefinitely. “I have seen for myself how a small draught makes a letter disappear,” said Granberg. “There are things we could see a few years ago that we can no longer see.” What is not read today may never be read.
The shelter above the complex, seen from behind the fence. The site is closed to the public.Photo: Mpb eu, Wikimedia Commons, public domain
The 3D model was made by the Global Digital Heritage foundation with Romania's National Heritage Institute, in their digitisation programme in Romania, with campaigns in October 2023 and September 2024; the model belongs to the 2024 campaign collection, and the day of the scan is not published. It was built from 374 positions of a Leica RTC360 laser scanner and 2,702 photographs, and published in November 2025 under the open CC BY 4.0 licence. The international team of Dr. Evgenia Komatarova-Balinova, of the National Archaeological Institute with Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (NAIM-BAS), also documented the complex with laser scans; the model here is not theirs.
The original has 4.5 million triangles. Here it is reduced to about 360,000 so that it loads quickly on a phone too, with smaller surface photographs. It is a viewing version that keeps the overall shape of the rooms; the scratches on the walls are not visible in the original model either.
The scan has no geographic coordinates. We placed the names of the churches by fitting the general plan published in 2009 over the scan: dwelling L1, the block with B2–B4 and sector E each match their outline. North also comes from that plan, to within a few degrees. The 2.3-metre height of B4 and the direction of its altar we measured in the scan ourselves.
The page rests on the sources below. Counts, dates and readings follow them; hypotheses are marked as such in the text.
Ansamblul rupestru de la Murfatlar, Romanian Wikipedia: the 11 June 1957 discovery, the 1957–1962 campaigns, churches B1–B4, the CT-I-s-A-02585 listing, the decay.
Murfatlar Cave Complex, English Wikipedia: the traditional dating, the older inscription tally, the First Bulgarian Empire setting.
Oana Damian, Andra Samson, Mihai Vasile, Complexul rupestru de la Murfatlar-Basarabi, Materiale și Cercetări Arheologice 2009: the per-script tally — three Greek, 20 Cyrillic, one Glagolitic, about 60 undeciphered runes — the Slavonic year-6500 inscription at the B1 entrance, the Greek 982 graffito, the year 943 on the vallum, the daily loss of visible graffiti, the many different authors.
The Murfatlar rock-cut complex, Constanța Museum of National History and Archaeology: churches B4, E3 and E5, the religious-commemorative Slavonic content, the 982 graffito.
The Invisible Traces of Murfatlar, National Archaeological Institute with Museum, Sofia, 2024: the expedition begun in 2021, 132 inscriptions as reported at the time (the expedition leader now reports 210), over 500 graffiti, the upper limit raised to the twelfth century, the last inscription from the fourteenth.
A. Kamburov, E. Komatarova-Balinova, M. Tsenov, Application of SLAM LIDAR Scanning for 3D Digitalization of the Murfatlar Rock Complex in Romania, Proc. 9th International Conference on Cartography and GIS, Nessebar, 2024, pp. 263–272: the May 2023 mobile laser-scanning campaign (handheld SLAM scanner plus iPhone 14 Pro) and its 3D processing chain.
E. Komatarova-Balinova, Y. Miltenov, A. Granberg, Church № 4 from the Murfatlar Rock Complex – Some Newly Documented Graffiti along the East-West Axis and Their Analogies, Pontica LVI, 2023, pp. 161–199: newly documented B4 graffiti along the east–west axis (April 2022 photographic documentation), with Pliska analogies.
Dr. Evgenia Komatarova-Balinova (NAIM-BAS), the expedition leader, personal communication, 28 September 2026: 210 documented inscriptions; the last 3D laser scan was conducted in 2025; the project is NAIM-BAS-led, in collaboration with MINAC.
Dr. Antoaneta Granberg (University of Gothenburg), personal communication, 28 September 2026: she is a team member, not the project leader; the leader is Dr. Komatarova-Balinova (NAIM-BAS); about twenty researchers have contributed across the project's stages (the May 2025 expedition report describes an eight-person group).
Dr. Evgenia Komatarova-Balinova (NAIM-BAS), personal communication, 29 September 2026: the B4 entrance is on the west side, not the north; the church's axis deviates 10 degrees from the Orthodox orientation; two further papers (above).
Forskare gör en sista expedition, University of Gothenburg, May 2025: the last field expedition, the indefinite closure, the eight researchers, Antoaneta Granberg's words.
Orașul Murfatlar, cross-border tourism strategy, 2019: the complex declared unvisitable.
The invisible traces of Murfatlar, the project led by the National Archaeological Institute with Museum in Sofia, with MINAC and the University of Gothenburg: over 500 graffiti, 132 of them texts (70 newly recorded; the expedition leader reported 210 in September 2026), four superimposed churches and two chapels, the 14th-century Cyrillic inscription.
Global Digital Heritage and GDH-Afrika, with the National Heritage Institute (INP), The Basarabi-Murfatlar Cave Complex, 3D model published November 2025, CC BY 4.0: 374 Leica RTC360 laser-scan positions and 2,702 photographs. The 3D view and the level plans are made from it.
Oana Damian, Andra Samson, Mihai Vasile, Complexul rupestru de la Murfatlar-Basarabi, Materiale și Cercetări Arheologice, n.s. V, 2009, pp. 117–158: the general plan (fig. 4), the church plans (figs. 5–6), the dimensions of B1–B4, E3 and E5, the three levels and their order, the 9.5-metre block.
The Murfatlar cave complex, Museum of National History and Archaeology, Constanța: the walls of B1, B3 and B4, the crosses and ships in B3, six churches in use for about half a century.
Bunuri istorice și arheologice excepționale, Historia, 14 July 2026: the National Heritage Institute's 3D campaigns with Global Digital Heritage in October 2023 and September 2024.
Checks: the per-script tally is the 2009 inventory's, the totals cover the expedition's work since 2021, with 210 texts reported by the expedition leader; the years 982 and 992 are contested readings, and the traditional dating has been revised towards the 12th century. The church dimensions are the 2009 archaeologists'; where the Constanța museum gives others, both are shown. The height of B4 and the direction of its altar are measured in the scan. Checked against the sources on 24, 28 and 29 September 2026.
