The Clocociov monastery, dedicated to Saints Arhanghels Mihail and Gavriil, enrolls its name among the oldest monastic establishments. Its beginnings, without being fixed in the documents of that time, have been lost as time passed.
Some of the documents certifying as the founder the ruler Michael the Brave, who also endowed it with donations, the degradations occurred after 1628 determined a new and substantial recovery during Matei Basarab’s reign. Thus, rebuilding the monastery is attributed to the great governor Diicu Buicescu vel Aga, relative of Prince Matei Basarab along with his wife Dumitra ,housekeeper and his mother, housekeeper Mara. The fact is that the building of the old church began in 1645 and lasted several months.
A tradition said that Matei Basarab, being pursued by the Turks, has hidden in the hollow of a elder tree of the Clocociov’s woods.. Escaping the pursuers in gratitude decided to build a monastery, to which along his reign has dedicated many estates. In support of this tradition comes the testimony of a catagraphy since 1862, which notifies that “the church is founded on 7153 (1645) by the late Matei Basarab Voda” probably under the influence of a inscription placed in 1645, when the building was restored by the nobleman Diicu Buicescu, grandson of the prince.
Between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the monastery was known by the properties andby the revenues that it had, being dedicated by Prince Alexandru Coconul to the Koutloumousiou monastery on Mount Athos.
Beginning with the second half of the eighteenth century, especially after the secularization of the monastery, the complex has lost more damage due to the robberies during the first world war and because of the earthquakes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which led to his total degradation. Because of the deep scars left by the 1977 earthquake, the church needed a total restoration between 1980-1981. The Monastery partially preserves the enclosure wall, high, with huge buttresses on the sides, which gives to the complex a fortress character. The belfry is a structure made up of two levels: the ground floor flanked by two niches within the wall thickness and the hexagonal tower with arched openings within which lies the bells. The church was built in a three-conic plan with an open porch, with rounded arches on circular thick pillars. Here, a beautiful frame carved in stone that adorns the inscription from 1645 decorates the entrance to the interior. The front door, the pews, the altar screen and the rest of the furniture are made of beautiful carved wood. But the painting is new, made in 1937 by painter Nicolae Pana. From the old painting is still preserved, in the narthex, the votive painting, a remarkable group portrait with the portraits of the founders and of their immediate descendants. Inside the building was arranged also a museum with an important collection of ancient Romanian art , including icons, pieces of decorative art (especially silver-plating, embroideries, fabrics and wood carvings) and books with illustrations engraved in wood, executed in the most popular printing houses in the country by faimous Romanian artists. Well preserved, they form a collection of an important historical and cultural value, evoking different moments in the history of the monastery, and a long and intense creative activity in the decorative arts field. Today, the monastery congregation has 40 nuns, the Abbot being Stavrofora Iulia Băgăceanu and servant Priest Nicolae Bălăşoiu.