New Jerusalem Monastery

Listen first. The river Istra moves slowly below the hill. Rooks call from the old trees, and on a still day you can hear bells carry across the water meadows. Ahead of you, white walls with heavy towers circle the crest of the slope. Above them rises a great rotunda, crowned by a tall, pointed roof. It looks less like a Russian village church and more like a building from far away. That is the whole idea of this place.

This is the New Jerusalem Monastery, also called the Resurrection Monastery. It was founded in the 1650s by Patriarch Nikon, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church at the time. Nikon did not want simply another monastery. He wanted to bring the Holy Land to the Moscow countryside. The Russian faithful could not easily travel to Jerusalem. So, in a sense, Jerusalem would come to them.

Here is the first surprise. The landscape around you was renamed as part of the plan. The river Istra became the Jordan. Nearby high ground was given names such as Mount Tabor, the mountain linked with the Transfiguration of Christ, and Eleon, an old name for the Mount of Olives. The monastery hill itself stood for the holy city. A pilgrim walking here could trace a map of the Gospels with their own feet, without leaving Russia.

At the centre stands the Cathedral of the Resurrection. Its plan follows the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem — the church built over the place where Christians believe Christ was crucified, buried, and rose again. Nikon had studied plans and a model brought back from the Holy Land. The builders copied the layout of the chapels, the rotunda over the tomb, and even the separate raised chapel of Golgotha. It was a copy, but not a cold one. It was filled with Russian ideas of colour and decoration.

Nikon's own story is dramatic. He was a powerful and forceful man, and his church reforms divided Russian believers. He also clashed with Tsar Alexei, who had once been his close friend. In the 1660s, a church council removed him from office and sent him into exile in the north. He never saw his great cathedral finished. Years later, he was allowed to return, but he died on the journey. His body was brought here and buried inside the cathedral he had dreamed of.

Now look up at the rotunda's pointed roof. It is not the first one. In the early eighteenth century, the original tall roof collapsed. For years the heart of the cathedral stood damaged. In the middle of the eighteenth century, under Empress Elizabeth, it was rebuilt. The famous court architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli was involved in the design. That explains something you may notice inside — a lighter, more decorative style, with curving Baroque forms, sitting beside the older seventeenth-century work.

The second surprise is in the tiles. Look closely at the window frames, doorways, and walls, and you will see glazed ceramic decoration in deep greens, yellows, blues, and whites. Russians call this kind of work tsenina. The masters who made it came largely from the western lands of the old Polish-Lithuanian state, including today's Belarus. Their tiles became a model for decoration across Russian architecture for decades. Some carry flowers, angels, and winding vines, all raised in relief so they catch the light.

The twentieth century brought near destruction. In 1941, during the Second World War, the front line reached this area. Retreating German forces blew up the cathedral and much of the monastery. The great rotunda fell. Bell towers and walls were badly damaged. For a long time afterwards, parts of the complex stood as ruins. Old photographs from those years show broken walls open to the sky, with weeds growing where pilgrims once prayed.

Restoration began slowly in the Soviet period and continued for many decades. In recent years, a very large programme rebuilt the cathedral and repaired the walls and towers. The rotunda roof was raised again, and the interiors were recreated, including much of the ceramic work. In 2017, the cathedral was consecrated once more. So what you see is partly old stone and partly careful reconstruction. Try to spot the difference between weathered original surfaces and fresh new work.

If you walk outside the main walls, look for a small, unusual building near the river. This is the skete, or private hermitage, of Patriarch Nikon. It was a retreat for prayer and solitude. It is famous for its tiny proportions and a small chapel set up on the roof. Standing beside it, you get a sense of the man who lived in these rooms — a patriarch who built on a huge scale, yet chose very small spaces for himself.

The monastery also gave its name to the town. For centuries, the settlement around it was called Voskresensk, from the Russian word for resurrection. It became Istra only in 1930, taking the name of the river. Near the monastery today there is a large museum complex with collections of art, church objects, and local history. Nearby, you can also find an open-air area with traditional wooden buildings, moved here to show the old rural life of the region.

As you move through the grounds, notice how the place changes with the season. In summer, the meadows below are green and soft, and families sit on the grass by the river. In winter, the white walls almost disappear into the snow, and only the dark roofs and gold crosses stand out. In every season, the best views of the whole ensemble come from the lower ground, where the cathedral rises above the walls like a ship on a wave.

Before you go, stand still for a moment and look again at the rotunda. A patriarch imagined it, an empress rebuilt it, a war threw it down, and people of our own time raised it once more. The river below is still called the Jordan by some locals. Listen for the bells as you walk away... and notice how the sound follows you across the water, long after the walls are out of sight.