Sviyazhsk Monastery of the Dormition of Our Lady

The monastery was founded at the same time as the formation of the Kazan diocese. From 1555 until the mid-18th century, it served as the primary spiritual, educational, and missionary center for the entire Middle Volga region. From here Orthodoxy spread among local Mari, Chuvash, Mordovian, and Tatar population.

In its heyday, the monastery was one of the largest in all of Russia. Pskov architects, presumably Postnik Yakovlev and Ivan Shiryay, created its architectural ensemble. Yakovlev built St. Basil’s Cathedral, and together Yakovlev and Shiryay also constructed the Kazan Kremlin’s walls, Spasskaya Tower, and the Cathedral of the Annunciation.

The monastery’s oldest churches, Nikolskaya Church and the Dormition Cathedral, are masterpieces of 16th-century Russian architecture.

The Dormition Cathedral was built in the likeness of Kiev Pechersk Lavra. Construction took four years and was completed in 1555. The fact that the cathedral was originally erected with stone underlines the importance of Sviyazhsk as an outpost of Orthodoxy and the state.

The cathedral’s architecture is one of the most advanced monuments to the precision of the Pskov-Novgorod masters. In the 18th century, the Dormition Church was supplemented with a bud-shaped dome in both the Ukrainian baroque style and that of a kokoshnik, a Russian headdress. These churches are the only examples in Russia to combine medieval Russian and Ukrainian baroque architecture.

While cathedral’s exterior fresco painting has not survived, inside unique multicolor paintings covering 1,080 square meters can be admired. A full cycle of wall paintings from the 16^th century have survived in the cathedral. Thus, Sviyazhsk is one of two places in the world, along with the Saviour’s Transfiguration Monastery in Yaroslavl, where the history of fresco painting of this era can be studied. The image of St. Christopher is the only in the world that depicts the saint with the head of a horse.

The icons in Dormition Cathedral’s iconostasis are rare examples of 16th-century religious art. After restoration in the 1970s, they were transferred to the State Museum of Fine Arts.

After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the monastery was closed. Until 2000, the reliquary of St. Herman was hidden under the altar of a small chapel to the miracle-working Yaroslavl icon at Kazan’s Arsk Cemetery, which was the only active church in the capital of the Tatar Republic from 1939 to 1946.

Until 1994, the Monastery of the Dormition of Our Lady was home to a psychiatric colony. In 1997, the monastery was officially restored. Now it is not only a unique monument of medieval architecture visited by thousands of tourists annually, but also a functioning monastery.