This monastery is on Selvitsky Island on Lake Valdai, 10 kilometres from the town of Valdai, the district centre. Patriarch Nikon Minin founded this establishment in 1653. The above image is the Holy Gate with the Gate Church of St Philip. The Soviets closed it in the 1920s; the Church regained it in 1991… it’s now restored to its former glory.
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The Ivan the Great Belltower (Колокольня Ивана Великого) is the tallest tower in the Moscow Kremlin, with a height of 81 metres (266 ft). Grand Prince Ivan III Vasilyevich (“The Great”) of Moscow and all Rus built it in 1508 for the cathedrals in Cathedral Square, as they didn’t have their own belltowers. Like so many other buildings in the Kremlin, an Italian architect designed it. Until the building of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in 1883, it was the tallest building in Moscow; it was forbidden to put up any building taller than the Belltower. Napoleon attempted to blow the tower up as part of his retreat from Moscow, but it only suffered minor structural damage. Inside the tower, a 329-step spiral staircase leads to the highest observation deck. It has a choir of 22 bells (18 small, 4 large).
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This church is part of the Assumption Monastery near Fedoseyeva. This hill, along with the holy spring on the banks of the Don River, according to legend, is the burial-place of Russian warriors who died of their wounds after the Battle of the Kulikovo Pole in 1380.
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In 1644, Monk St Dalmat Ivanovich Mokrinsky founded this monastery when he built his cell in an isolated region to the east of the Ural Mountains (he came from Beryozovo in the Ural region). It endured until 1922, when the atheist authorities closed it. The property saw several uses… a theatre, commanders’ school in the VOV, factory. In 1989, the Church started to take over the property, a process complete in 1994. At present, there’s a small community of monks here, and the run-down buildings and property are under renovation.
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