Pechersk Monastery

In Russia there are such ancient buildings, looking at which is breathtaking only from the realization of how much these walls survived, what historical figures walked along its corridors and all the legends come to life in images familiar from childhood and school. Such and Pskov-Pechersk Holy Assumption Monastery. Its history began more than 530 years ago. It was here that hegumen Cornelius tragically died by the sword of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, under which the monastery experienced its heyday.

It is believed that the monastery was founded in 1473, since the consecration of its first temple. However, the earliest mention of this place dates back to 1392. Then there was no monastery, but it was here, at the stream Kamenets, the hunter Selisha heard the singing of monks-hermits, mistaking them for the voices of angels.

The place for the monastery, and later the whole fortress, was chosen non-standard. Instead of elevation, it is located at the bottom of a deep ravine, but this circumstance did not affect the defensive qualities of the structure.

In the sixteenth century, under the abbot of Cornelius, the monastery flourished. Churches and temples are built here, and an impressive wall with battle towers is built around the monastery. According to legend, the abbot asked permission to build a wall at Ivan the Terrible, when the tsar came to the monastery during the Livonian War. The monarch gave his permission, but on the condition that the walls fit on the skin of a bull. Then Cornelius cut a bull’s skin into many narrow flaps and “delineated” the monastery with them, and the walls were built on them. Returning from the war to Moscow, the tsar again came to the monastery and was struck by its walls. He thought Cornelius had betrayed him and committed treason. The angry monarch, seeing the abbot in the gates of the fortress, without hesitation, took out a sword and cut off the priest's head. Instantly repenting, he took the body of Cornelius and carried it in his arms to the Church of the Assumption. This trail was then called the "Bloody Way" (now it is lined annually with a flower carpet).

From those distant times, magnificent monuments remained: the Church of Nikola Vratar (1565), the Mikhailovsky Cathedral (1827), Zvonnitsa (1523), the Annunciation Church (1540) with the Sretenskaya Church attached to it in 1870, the sacristy (XVII century), the cave Assumption Cathedral (in the middle of the XVIII century, superbuilt by another, Pokrovsky, church, and received a common facade in the Baroque style with it. There are still legendary stone walls of Tailov, Upper Grids, Tararygina, Izborskaya, Annunciation, Lower Grids, Nikolskaya, Petrovsky and Prison Towers.

In the monastery there is a wheelchair left there by Anna Ioannovna. One of the legends says that Anna Ioannovna was forced to abandon her wheelchair in the monastery after a snake wrapped the spoke of the wheel. This was considered a bad omen and Her Majesty refused to drive.