On my last trip to Moscow, I also planned to visit an interesting place. This is the Resurrection New Jerusalem Monastery, which is located 30 minutes from Moscow on the Istra River.
The monastery is quite ancient. Construction began in the middle of the 17th century. The main feature of this monastery is the fact that a temple was built on the territory, which repeats the appearance of the main Christian temple in Jerusalem. Hence the name.
The founder of the monastery is Patriarch Nikon. This Russian church leader is very famous in Russia, since his church reforms created a large church schism in the state. Patriarch Nikon introduced reforms with the aim of reorganizing church rites and services to bring them to a single standard. Before Patriarch Nikon, many leaders wanted to do this work, including one well-known antagonist of Nikon's reforms - Protopop Avvakum.
These two people were both very interesting and had a lot of merit. They were even friends. But in the end, they became enemies.
Nikon rose and carried out reforms, built monasteries. Avvakum went into opposition and became the leader of the schismatic movement.
But this excursion does not really matter.
The monastery itself attracted me.
Big and beautiful.
We arrived at the monastery in the morning. The sky was overcast, but it was clear that here and there a blue sky appeared. By lunchtime, the sky cleared. We walked along the walls of an ancient monastery under a blue sky. This was very beautiful.
Topography, place names, church buildings of the monastery and the surrounding area, stretching for several tens of kilometers, created the image of the Holy Land and reproduced the main Christian shrines of Palestine. On the hill located in the center of this territory, called Zion, a monastery was founded - a kind of city-temple. Some buildings of the monastery complex repeat the outlines of the structures of the Holy Land, and the main cathedral of the monastery, consecrated in 1685, was built in the likeness of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The cathedral reproduces the sacred likenesses of Mount Calvary, the cave of the Holy Sepulcher, the place of the three-day burial and the Life-giving Resurrection of the Savior. The towers also have symbolic names: Entry Jerusalem, Gethsemane, etc. The hills surrounding the monastery were called the Olives, Favorsky, etc., the villages - Preobrazhenskoe, Nazareth, Capernaum. The fast winding river Istra, named Jordan, flows through the land of Russian Palestine; the stream flowing around the monastery hill is the Kidron Stream.
Source - http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/1422207.html
I walked around the courtyard of the monastery and looked with all my eyes. This is a very beautiful place. Not ordinary temples. Very large dome, underground church ..
In short, I recommend visiting this place.
