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• Sergiev Posad (The Trinity Lavra)

Sergiev Posad (The Trinity Lavra)

Sergiev Posad of the Moscow Oblast bears its name in honor of Saint Sergius who founded the biggest monastery in Russia.  In 1919 the city was renamed in Sergiev and in 1939 –in Zagorsk, in honor of the revolutionary Zagorsky. But in 1993 the town finally regained its historic name.

The city was started with the Trinity Monastery. The glory of Saint Sergy and the monastery founded by him attracted to the cloister monks and pilgrims. Little by little also peasants started to settle near the monastery.

In the center of Sergiev Posad on the low hill Makovets at the confluence of the rivers Konchura and Vondyuga the Trinity Lavra is situated. It is the largest orthodox stauropegial monastery of Russia. It was founded in XIV by Saint Sergius of Radonezh.

The Trinity Lavra was one of the richest monasteries of Russia and formed part of the largest landowners (in 1763 on the threshold of a large-scale confiscation of the church lands, Lavra owned more than 100 thousand serf peasants).

The shrines of the monastery — the relics of Saint Sergius of Radonezh (in the Trinity Cathedral), the relics of Nikon and Sergius (Mikheus) of Radonezh, Saint Serapion of Novgorod, the metropolitan Ioasaf, the archimandrite Dionisius, the Saint Maxim  the Greek, icon of Saint Life-giving Trinity by Andrey Rublyov (nowadays in Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow) attracted thousands of pilgrims from all over Russia.

Since 1940 the Trinity Lavra is a state museum reserve.

Numerous architectural constructions of the Trinity Lavra were built by the best architects of the country in XV—XIX. The ensemble of the monastery includes more than 50 buildings of various destination.
The architectural ensemble of the Trinity Lavra is inscribed on the UN heritage list.