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 rotunda and the bell tower were lost in 1941, and the restoration completed in 2016 rebuilt them, so much of what stands is reconstruction on surviving lower fabric.

History

Patriarch Nikon founded the monastery in 1656 as a patriarchal residence near Moscow, on a site chosen for its likeness to the Holy Land, with the Istra standing for the Jordan, and he brought in monks of many origins to represent the whole Orthodox world. It was still unfinished at his death in 1681, when the royal family, Tsarevna Tatyana and Regent Sophia among them, saw the work through, and a large restoration ran from 2010 to 2016 (Wikipedia, New Jerusalem Monastery).

What's there

• 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.

Things to know

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.

Key facts