The Ozren Monastery is a Serbian Orthodox monastery dedicated to Saint Nicholas and located 6 kilometres from the town of Petrovo in northern Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the spiritual centre of the area of Mount Ozren. It was probably founded in the second half of the 16th century, during the office of Serbian Patriarch Makarije Sokolović, who was granted permission from the sultan of the Ottoman Empire to renovate and build churches and monasteries. Folk tradition, formed in the 18th century, has it that the Ozren Monastery was founded by King Dragutin, a member of the Serbian Nemanjić dynasty, who ruled north-eastern Bosnia from 1284 to 1316.
The frescoes in the monastery's church were painted in the early 17th century. After the Great Turkish War (1683–1699), the monastery fell into disrepair. The renovation of the church began in 1842, after it was allowed by Ottoman authorities. The bell tower outside the church was built in 1872. The church was also refurbished in 1920 and 1996. Among its icons is a Pietà painted in the 17th century by Emmanuel Lambardos, a painter of the Cretan School.
References:Towering 52 meters above the sea, Bengtskär lighthouse is the tallest one in Scandinavia. The building started in in 1905 after the shipwreck of S/S Helsingfors and was completed in 1906. The lighthouse was designed by architect Florentin Granholm. On December a special petrol lantern, designed and built in Paris, was brought to Bengtskär and installed atop the tower.
German fleet bombarded Bengstkär in the First World War in 1914. Since the Gulf of Finland was heavily mined, it was not until 1919 that the surrounding seas were declared safe for shipping, that the light was lit again.
After the war the military value of Bengtskär increased as part of the defence system of independent Finland. In Second World War (1941) Soviet Union made a suprise attack to island. After a bloody battle, the small Finnish garrison emerged victorious. Intermittent repairs to the facility continued during the post-war period.