!!!Golden Ring of Russia, Sergiyev Posad

by Oleg Gaponyuk,
Sergey Semenov,
Stas Sedov and
Sergey Shandin,
members of the [AirPano Team|Geography/About/Consortium/AirPano,_Team] that is a member of the [global-geography Consortium|Geography/About/Consortium]. \\

14 July 2015

with kind permission of [AirPano|http://www.AirPano.com]

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

[{Image src='01_St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad.jpg' caption='St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad' alt='' width='900' popup='false' height='597'}]

Undoubtedly, the town's main landmark is the famous Trinity Lavra of St.
Sergius. It ‘has been living' an interesting life since its foundation
(the middle of the 14th 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, 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 stone temple was
founded on the spot of the former wooden church. It was built by Serbian
monks from Kosovo, who took refuge here after the Battle of Kosovo
Field.  Later the monastery took the name of the Trinity Sergius Lavra.

[{Image src='02_St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad.jpg' caption='St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad' alt='' width='900' popup='false' height='600'}]

Ivan the Terrible himself visited this place to conduct control of the
building process and then afterwards False Dmitry tested its durability.
And even Stenka Razin is said to have been a prisoner inside one of its
monasteries.

[{Image src='03_St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad.jpg' caption='St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad' alt='' width='900' popup='false' height='655'}]

The Lavra withstood the 16-year siege of the Polish and Lithuanian
interventionists, at the time of the Streltsy Uprising it served as a
refuge for tsarevna Sofia Alekseevna, Ivan and Peter tsareviches. This
is the place where the massacre of Sofia's supporters took place and
Peter the Great left this place as an absolute ruler. By 1763 the
Trinity Sergius Lavra, having nearly ‘forgotten' the initial idea of its
creation, had become one of the richest monasteries of Russia as well as
was considered to be one of the largest landowners and possessed more
than 100 thousand of peasants.

However, this is the reason the Lavra have enriched a world treasury of
architecture, because it's almost impossible to build and decorate
monuments without financial resources.

[{Image src='04_St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad.jpg' caption='St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad' alt='' width='900' popup='false' height='627'}]

The most significant iconostasis of the Lavra was created by the famous
Russian icon painters Andrey Rublev and Daniil Cherniy. The famous icon
"The Holy Trinity" was painted especially for this iconostasis by
Rublev. Totally, the monastery's ensemble includes more than 50
buildings of different purposes, which were designed and decorated by
the best masters of the 15th-19th centuries. Since 1993 the
architectural complex of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius has been
inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

[{Image src='05_St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad.jpg' caption='St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad' alt='' width='900' popup='false' height='655'}]

But the Holy Trinity Lavra is not the only landmark of Sergiev Posad.
Being surrounded by greenery and standing on the banks of the Kanchura
River, this town preserved a lot of ancient buildings and seems to stay
in the past. The posads (the districts of the town) were spontaneously
built around the monastery and the modern town did not manage to join
them altogether. The majority of districts are still bearing charming
old names such as Hardware Settlement (Skobianoy Poselok), Peasant
Village (Krestianskaya Sloboda) or Birds' Town (Ptitsegrad).

[{Image src='06_St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad.jpg' caption='St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad' alt='' width='900' popup='false' height='621'}]

Despite the fact that modern Sergiev Posad considerably depends on the
monastery, it still has several surprising and special sides. The only
research institute of toys in the country and probably in the world is
situated here. Previously, there was the highest 20 meter tall waterfall
in the Moscow Region. Isn't it a miracle indeed? At the Soviet Union
period the town bore the name Zagorsk in honour of a revolutionary, who
had never been here. Moreover, even now the historians can not disclose
the relation between them. But thanks to this, the name of the town's
inhabitants is more similar to space aliens' name: the Zagorchans (in
Soviet period) or the Sergievchans (in old times and nowadays).

[{Image src='07_St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad.jpg' caption='St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad' alt='' width='900' popup='false' height='524'}]

All the events that, according to any unfortunate accident haven't
happened there, in Sergiev Posad, and taking in consideration its rich
history, were skillfully created and imprinted in Art. For example, 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.

[{Image src='08_Bird_s eye view of Sergiyev Posad.jpg' caption='Bird_s eye view of Sergiyev Posad' alt='' width='900' popup='false' height='655'}]

We offer you to admire the bird's eye view of the town, imagining that
some historical, heroic or completely unbelievable event is going on
right near that house...

[{Image src='09_St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad.jpg' caption='St. Sergius Lavra, Sergiyev Posad' alt='' width='900' popup='false' height='489'}]

\\ \\
[21 Panoramas of Sergiyev_Posad|Geography/Asia/Russia/Pictures/Panoramas_of_Golden_Ring_of_Russia_(Sergiyev_Posad)]










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