New Jerusalem Monastery

Patriarch Nikon founded New Jerusalem in 1656 with an unusually literal ambition: to reproduce the holy sites of Palestine in the Moscow region so that pilgrims who could not travel there could visit them here. The Resurrection cathedral was built as a copy of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, working from measurements and a wooden model, with a rotunda over a replica of the tomb, a subterranean church, and chapels corresponding to the originals. The surrounding landscape was renamed to match - the Istra became the Jordan, the hills Zion and Tabor, the villages Nazareth and Bethany. Nikon's reforms split the Russian church and he fell from power before the work was done. The complex was blown up during the German retreat in 1941, losing the rotunda and the bell tower, and the restoration completed in 2016 rebuilt them, so much of what stands is post-war reconstruction on surviving lower fabric.

What you actually see

• The Resurrection cathedral - a deliberate copy of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
• The renamed landscape - a river called the Jordan and hills called Zion and Tabor.
• The 1941 destruction - the rotunda and bell tower lost, rebuilt by 2016.
• The tiled decoration - seventeenth-century ceramic ornament on the cathedral.

When to go

May to September. Two to three hours. The museum beside the monastery is a separate large modern building with its own collections.

Honest expectations

Much of the cathedral is post-1941 reconstruction, which the site does acknowledge. It is an active monastery with dress rules. The adjoining museum is a separate ticket and institution. Busy at weekends and on feast days.

Nearby

Istra town is close; Moscow is east on the suburban line.