Island - Grad Sviyazhsk (5 hours)
Description:
30 kilometers from Kazan, at the mouth of the fast full-flowing river Sviyaga, there is a miracle island, the island-city of Sviyazhsk.
A unique city-fortress, built in the middle of the XVI at the beginning of the reign of Ivan the Terrible. At that time, tension between the Kazan Khanate and the Russian state reached a critical point. After the wedding of Ivan the Terrible to the reign, from the age of 17, he undertakes two military unsuccessful campaigns in Kazan. After that, he makes a bold and ingenious decision to build a fortress near the residence of the Kazan Khan. A thousand km. on the Upper Volga in the Uglicheskoye county, a wooden city with churches and a defensive fortress is being built. In April 1551, as soon as the Volga opened, a caravan of ships fused the dismantled city down to the planned site. In almost one month, the city was built, a huge work was carried out and a powerful military fortress was built. October 2, 1552 Kazan was taken.
Sviyazhsk becomes not only a military-administrative center, but also the spiritual center of a huge conquered region. The Mother of God - Uspensky and Trinity - Sergiev monasteries, Ioanno - Predechensky convent, which performed the state role of Christianization of non-Russian nationalities. Today, Sviyazhsk amazes tourists with unique monuments of ancient Russian architecture.
This is the stone Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, inside which frescoes of wall paintings of the second half of the XVI century and the St. Nicholas Refectory Church, erected at the same time, are preserved. A wooden church in the name of the Holy Trinity has been preserved, in which Ivan the Terrible prayed, the stone church of St. Sergius of Radonezh, where his ancient miraculous image is located. At the turn of the XIX and XX centuries, in the neo-Byzantine style, the Cathedral of Our Lady “All those who mourn Joy” was erected. The cathedral was built by the efforts of the last abbess of the women's monastery - Apphia. This is a whole and tragic era of the female monastery of the Ioan-Predechensk monastery. You will be told in detail and professionally.
