Photos

In 17th century, the ambitious Patriarch Nikon , whose reforms drove the Old Believers from the Orthodox Church, decided to prove that Russia deserved to be the centre of the Christian world by building the Holy City on the picturesque Istra River. The Holy City was to become the image of the Holy Land – “Russian Palestines”, with the exact copy of the Holy Sepulture. The site was thought as a grandiose New Jerusalem Monastery founded in 1656, 50km west of central Moscow.

It was modelled on Jerusalem even to the extent of renaming the Istra River the Jordan and the garden, Gethsemane. Unabashed by the harrowing schism in the Russian church he had unleashed in 1651, Nicon continued building his new monastery. Although Tsar Alexei applauded the project, he became disenchanted with Nikon's autocratic nature and in 1658 the offended Patriarch withdrew to Voskresensk (nowadays Istra town). Eight years later Alexei finally ordered Nikon to return to Moscow but it was to a special court where he was removed from office, defrocked, and sent into exile at the northen Ferapontovo Monastery. In 1681 the new Tsar, fedor, released him, but the old man died on the long journey back and is buried in Resurrection cathedral (background on this photo).

Near the Resurrection Cathedral you can see people waling to the Bell of Three Saints from the bell-tower of the church. The bell was made by monks Paisy and Sergei Turchaninov. On a bell there are figures of the fathers of church: Vasily the Great, Gregory the Theologian and Johann Chrysostom. Their figures are framed by semicircular arches and barrel-type columns, which pattern is close to ornament of Resurrection Cathedral.