Sergiev Posad Tour (The Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra)

Overview

A six-hour round trip from Moscow to the monastery at Sergiev Posad, about seventy kilometres north-east: the cathedrals, the bell tower and the grounds, with a guide and transport both ways.

What to expect

• Morning pickup in Moscow and the drive north-east.
• The walled monastery on foot, with commentary.
• The Trinity Cathedral and the Assumption Cathedral ensemble.
• The bell tower and the working parts of the complex.
• The drive back, returning to your hotel in the afternoon.

The monk who blessed an army

Sergius of Radonezh withdrew into the forest here in the 1330s to live alone, and the settlement that grew around him became the most important monastery in Russia. He is the country's patron saint, and the reason is as much political as religious.

In 1380, before the Battle of Kulikovo against the Golden Horde, the prince Dmitry Donskoy came here for his blessing. Sergius gave it and sent two of his own monks to fight. The victory that followed is treated as the beginning of the end of Mongol rule over the Russian principalities, and the monastery's standing has never really been separable from that morning.

Sixteen months behind these walls

Between 1608 and 1610, during the period of dynastic collapse Russians call the Time of Troubles, a Polish-Lithuanian force laid siege to the monastery. The defenders were badly outnumbered — a garrison plus monks, townspeople and refugees — and they held for sixteen months.

Disease inside the walls killed far more than the fighting did. The siege was eventually lifted, and it turned the monastery into a national symbol of endurance in a way no amount of building work could have. The fortifications you walk past were doing their job in living memory of the men who designed them.

The icon painted for this iconostasis

Andrei Rublev painted his Trinity — three angels seated at a table, the most famous icon in Russian art — for the Trinity Cathedral here, in memory of Sergius, around the 1420s.

It is worth knowing what is unusual about it before you look. Earlier versions of the scene crowd the table with servants, a calf being slaughtered, the whole biblical narrative. Rublev removed nearly all of it: three figures, one cup, a silence in the middle of the composition where the argument used to be. The panel has moved between museum and church over the past century, but the building it was made for is the one you are standing in.

Where the nesting doll comes from

Sergiev Posad has been the centre of Russian toymaking for a very long time, and it is where the matryoshka went from novelty to industry in the 1890s.

The town had carvers, lathes and a market on the pilgrim road, which is exactly what a nesting wooden doll needs. There is a toy museum, and the stalls near the monastery sell the local product rather than an import — the difference in the painting is visible once you have handled a few.

Practicalities

This is an active monastery and a seminary, not only a monument. Women cover their heads and shoulders, men remove hats, and knees are covered by everyone; scarves are usually available at the gate.

Photography is restricted or prohibited inside the churches and around services, and the guide will tell you where. Services run throughout the day and take precedence over visitors. The grounds involve walking on cobbles and steps, and the drive each way is around an hour and a half depending on the road.