Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius • 360° Aerial Panorama

Several chapters of Russian History can be easily illustrated by the pictures of Sergiev Posad which is small town located in the Moscow Region.  Tartar yoke, Andrey Rublev and Dmitry Donskoy, the duel between Peresvet and Chelubey, Minin  and Pozharsky, Peter I and Savva Mamontov - all these great people and events are more or less related with Sergiev Posad. 

Undoubtedly, the town's main place of interest is the famous Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra. It "has been living" an interesting life since its foundation (the middle of XIV century). The story began when a young man Varfolomey, who was later taken the monastic vows as Sergy and propagated the ideas of non-money-grabbing and diligence, had settled in a simple cabin after the death of his parents. Step by step the monastery was becoming bigger and attracting both new devotees and pilgrims from all over Russia.  A hundred years later the main temple which is the Trinity Cathedral was founded on the place of a wooden church. It was built with the help of Serbian monks from Kosovo, who took refuge here after the Battle of Kosovo Field.  Later the monastery began to be named as The Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra.

Personally Ivan the Terrible came there to control its building process and then False Dmitry tested its durability. They say that Stenka Razin was a prisoner inside one of its monasteries.  

The Lavra withstood the 16-year siege of the Polish and Lithuanian interventionists, in times of the Streltsy revolt it served as a refuge for tsarevna Sofia Alekseevna, Ivan and Peter tsareviches. Particular here the massacre of Sofia's supporters took place and Peter I left this place as an absolute ruler. By 1763 the Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra had lost the principle idea of its creation and became one of the richest monasteries of Russia as well as was reckoned among the largest landowners and possessed more than 100 thousand of peasants.

However, taking in consideration this fact the Lavra could endow a world treasure house of architecture, because it's almost impossible to build and decorate monuments without financial resources.

The most significant iconostasis of the Lavra was created by the famous Russian icon painters Andrey Rublev and Daniil Cherniy. Especially for this iconostasis Rublev painted a famous icon "The Holy Trinity".  Totally, the monastery's ensemble includes more than 50 buildings of different missions, which were designed and decorated by the best masters of XV-XIX centuries. Since 1993 the architecture of the Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra has been an object of UNESCO World Heritage.

But the Lavra is not the only place of interest of Sergiev Posad. This town, full of greenery and standing on the banks of the Kanchura River, saved a lot of ancient buildings and seems to stay in the past. The posads, which are the town's districts, were spontaneously built around the monastery and the town couldn't finally join them. Most districts are still going on to have the charming old names such as Hardware Settlement (Skobianoy Poselok), Peasant Village (Krestianskaya Sloboda) or Birds' Town (Ptitsegrad).

Modern Sergiev Posad, which life considerably depends on the monastery, nevertheless has several surprising and special sides. There is the only research institute of toys in this country, and may be in the world. Earlier, there was the highest 20-meter waterfall in the Moscow Region. Is it not a miracle indeed?  In times of Soviet Union the town was named Zagorsk in honour of a revolutionary, who had never been here. Moreover, till now the historians haven't still been able to understand the relation between them. But thanks to this, the name of the town's inhabitants is more similar to a space aliens' name: the Zagorchans (in Soviet period) or the Sergievchans (in old times and nowadays).

All the events that according to any unfortunate accident haven't happened there, in Sergiev Posad, taking in consideration its rich history, were skillfully created and imprinted in Art. As the examples, the adventures of the legendary intelligence agent Tuliev from the soviet hit movie "Resident's Fate" take place here; a fantastic story about an illiterate peasant girl, who makes her way up from a housemaid to a leading weaver (film "Light Way"), shot particular here. Even to illustrate the events from Vasilisa Prekrasnaya's life, the walls of this picturesque town were chosen and became the best decorations.

We offer you to admire the town from the height, imaging that some historical, heroic or completely unbelievable event is going on right besides that house...

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